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May 5, 2006
In search of what was lost
International campaign highlights exodus of Sephardim.
CASSANDRA FREEMAN
Last month in Vancouver, the second night of Passover was truly
different from any other night.
During the traditional Passover seder at Beth Hamidrash Synagogue,
Bill Iny, 55, and his mother, Josephine, 85, told the congregation
about their own personal exodus from Iraq in 1952.
"We all left Egypt together thousands of years ago ... still
reading from the same book, the same prayers and the same blessings,"
Bill Iny told the Independent a few days after the seder.
"Operation Babylon was a modern-day exodus that occurred in
our lifetime which reconnects us with our past generations and history."
The Inys are part of a growing international community of Jews and
Jewish organizations intent on educating the world about Operation
Babylon – the flight of some 850,000 Sephardi Jews from the
Middle East and North Africa – most around the time of the
formation of the state of Israel.
Their flight signalled the destruction of ancient Jewish communities
founded as early as 434 BCE, during the Babylonian Empire. The founders
of the Babylonian Talmud lived in what is now Iraq.
For the first time in history, Israel, the World Organization for
Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), Jews indigenous to the Middle
East and North Africa (Jimena), Justice for Jews from Arab Countries,
World Jewish Congress and others are launching a campaign that will
focus on the human rights of those who were expelled and their claims
for restitution.
After a meeting in Brussels at the beginning of April, European
Jewish Congress announced that the campaign members will also work
with "members of the diplomatic quartet for the Middle East
– the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European
Union."
Canadian Jewish Congress is now beginning to rebuild its National
Committee for Jews from Arab Lands as the Canadian chapter of the
international campaign. Last month, the Congress website featured
a Passover prayer for the former refugees written by Jimena.
For decades now, WOJAC has been collecting claims forms for Arab
and Iranian Jews, many of whom left almost everything behind when
they fled. For the last three years, WOJAC has been officially mandated
by the Israeli government to be the official distributor of the
forms.
Dr. Heskel Haddad, president of WOJAC, told the Independent that
the claims forms are for any Jews who left the Middle East or North
Africa at any time up to the present day. The 10-page form, available
on the WOJAC website, covers everything from human rights abuses
to frozen bank accounts, from jewellery to mikvahs and places of
worship.
In an article published in Midstream magazine in 1993, Haddad
estimated the value of Jewish assets left behind at $100 billion
US.
Bill Iny is filling out the form for his immediate family.
"I feel it is about time to reconcile and accurately record
this international human rights issue in order to enable civilization
to cleanly move forward," he said. "Big issues such as
these tend to get re-marketed by biased media into insignificance."
Iny was two-and-a-half years old when he and his mother and father
left Baghdad. He was wearing a gold pin that his aunt gave him at
birth. Iraqi officials at the airport grabbed at the pin and it
cracked in two.
Iny still has the other half – and with it, the testimony of
his mother and countless relatives who survived the violence that
began in Iraq on and off as early as 1941.
Rashid Ali's Nazi-fuelled coup set off rioting in Baghdad, leaving
hundreds of Jews dead or injured.
Josephine Iny remembers that time well.
"The Muslim mobs broke down the doors to the homes and looted
everything and raped the girls," she recalled. "Maddening
cries were coming from everywhere and a curfew was imposed and the
army eventually broke it up."
During this time, the Inys stayed with Muslim business associates,
who protected them from the mobs. But, in 1952, Jews were stripped
of their citizenship and ordered out of Iraq.
"That was when our money and possessions became confiscated,
bank accounts were frozen and assets seized," said Josephine
Iny. "Jews had to leave with only the clothes on their back.
Not even suitcases were allowed. You could put on five pairs of
pants and six sweaters if you wanted to but could carry nothing."
Israel sent planes to airlift Jews out.
"The seats were stripped out of the planes in order for there
to be more room. People were transported like cargo," said
Iny.
The Inys flew to France and lived there for three months before
they joined relatives in Montreal. For Bill Iny, growing up in Montreal,
the exodus and stories of violence kept on coming, with more relatives
escaping through Iran and one relative hanged in Baghdad in 1969.
Today, Iny remains cynical about ever receiving any compensation
for what his family left behind. (When she was growing up, his mother
remembers, her family had a brick and steel factory, orchards, houses
and an import/export business.)
"If the powers that be were going to grant money, Arab Jewry
would have to prove that human rights abuses took place," Iny
said.
The technicalities of international law make that whole process
extremely difficult, said Iny. Simply convicting Saddam Hussein
in today's world makes that evident.
"If it came true, it would be an amazing feeling of justice,"
Iny said – though he feels that the issue will be used politically
instead, to offset claims by Palestinians.
The Forgotten Refugees, a film produced by the David Project
and IsraTV in 2005, documents the experiences of families like the
Inys from Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. It debuted recently at the
Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.
In a universal sense, the film shows the strength of the human spirit
by profiling refugees who overcame their losses and built new lives
for themselves in Israel and abroad.
Like the people in the film, Iny said he is working to reclaim his
family's confiscated birthright and hopes to contribute to Canada
as much as his family contributed to Iraq.
For more information about the campaign for Jews from the Middle
East and North Africa, visit aish.com,
eurojewcong.org,
theforgottenrefugees.com,
wojac.com, cjc.ca
and jimena.org.
Cassandra Freeman is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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