The new address is www.jewishrefugees.org.uk.See you there ..read more

Persian Jews in Israel have been keeping channels open with people in Iran, as demonstrated by a Voice of America  documentary series made in 2017. Now the series has  been posted online, i24 News reports:(with thanks: Lily) Broadcaster Menashe Amir surrounded by Persian memorablilia in his Israeli home Amid long-standing and deepening tensions between Israel and Iran, some prominent Israelis with Persian roots have engaged in little-publicized contacts with Iran’s people and advocated for reviving the historic friendship between the two Mideast powers.  These Israelis are ..read more

It was one of the most eye-popping videos to surface from the Arab world: an Iraqi man calling for Benjamin Netanyahu to save him and bring him to Israel. The video, which seemed to  attract  the approval of bystanders,  was hailed by Israeli talk show host Avi Abelow as running contrary to the predominant narrative: that Arabs are instinctively hostile to Israel.   But delight amongst Jewish viewers turned to horror as these pictures began to emerge. They show that that the man was badly beaten and is now being treated in hospital. According to  Israeli Arabi ..read more

Tonight begins the longest fast of the Jewish year, Tisha b'Ab (9th of Av), in memory of the destruction of the two Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. Writing in Victor Hayoun reminisces about the customs specific to Tunisian Jewry. To make up for the ban on eating meat in the run-up to the 9th of Av, Jews ate a surfeit of Merguez, the spicy sausage typical of North Africa. Detail from the Arch of Titus showing the Romans carrying off booty from the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD We commonly called this period, in Tunisian Judeo-Arabic, "Agein"  or "Ayamet-El-Tkal" [literally: "heavy days"], th ..read more

How come a book about the Jews of Aden is suddenly appearing on the streets of this war-torn port at the tip of the Arabian peninsula? Adenis pose with 'Passage from Aden' in front of the Selim school, where Jewish children once studied, and in the main streets of Crater. Here 8,000 Jews once ran businesses and shops. Not a single Jew still lives in the city,today.  Before it became part of the independent state of Yemen,  Aden was under British rule for over 100 years. What is more startling is that Passage from Aden was written by an Israeli, Sarah Ansbacher,  and is abo ..read more

Antisemitism is threatening to penetrate deep  into the heart of Africa as the Congo contemplates disqualifying presidential hopeful Moise Katumbi for having a Sephardi father from Rhodes. (With thanks: Nancy) Moise Katumbi, successful businessman and presidential challenger.JTA — The ancestry of the son of a Jewish refugee in the Democratic Republic of Congo has emerged as a flashpoint for a political crisis that is threatening the integrity of the massive African country.   The crisis came to a head last week when lawmakers loyal to President Felix Tshiseked introduced a bi ..read more

Matters are moving apace as the new Israeli Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, prepares to implement the next stage of the Abraham Accords with Morocco.The Times of Israel reports: Foreign minister Yair Lapid (photo AFP) The Foreign Ministry is in talks with Morocco to arrange an official visit by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to the Arab nation, diplomatic sources told the Times of Israel Tuesday.   Last week, Lapid invited his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, to visit Israel. After a 20-year lull in diplomatic relations, Israel and Morocco renewed their ties late last year, amid a ..read more

Meet Hamos Guetta, who fled his native Libya for Italy in 1967. Italy and Italian cooking has had a profound influence on Jews like Guetta as Libya was an Italian colony. It was to teach his daughter his family's cuisine that Guetta first started making cookery videos. Now he has 17,000 followers on Youtube. Charming interview in Haaretz: Hamos Guetta demonstrates a recipe (Photo:Tamar Applebaum) “I was 12 when we arrived in Rome, desperately poor. We went for a walk in Piazza Vittorio, a huge square with a colorful market that rocked my world. I had never seen such produce. It stimulates al ..read more

The good news is that the Gulf States, bound by the Abraham Accords,are not pumping out antisemitism at their book fairs. The bad news is that Egypt, despite its Peace Accord with Israel, still displays  'hate literature' at this year's Cairo Book Fair. Article by Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the Jerusalem Post: An Arabic edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon  The Simon Wiesenthal Center annually monitors the shelves of seven Arab Book Fairs for incitement to hatred and violence. We send our findings to the Frankfurt Book Fair, where measures are tak ..read more

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz likes to publish context-free articles alleging discrimination by Ashkenazim of Sephardim in order to portray Zionism as a racist, colonial movement. Here is the latest example by Ofer Aderet, based on research by the historian Shay Hazkani. Hazkani discovered thousands of letters from disgruntled Moroccan  Jews who fought in Israel's War of Independence, complaining of discrimination by European Jews. Further into the article,  it transpires that discontent was also rife among Ashkenazi  Mahal volunteers, so this is not simply a binary Sephardi-Ash ..read more