Author: Lyn Julius

Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell

ISBN: 9781910383667

The shelves of libraries and book stores are full of tomes concerning Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust. There are also thousands of writings concerning Palestinian refugees. Yet, very little is written about the 850,000 Jews that fled Arab countries who were non-combatants and had to run for their lives from persecution, arrests on false charges, mob violence, and executions.

Why have we not heard about these Jews whose communities predate Islam by over one thousand years? There seems to be collective amnesia when it comes to the destruction of these indigenous Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa. 

The process of setting the record straight and deconstructing popular myths is a difficult task that is often met with widespread public resistance. In Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight, Lyn Julius takes on this task as she makes the case that it is imperative that we understand the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa if we are to fully understand the conflict in the Middle East. She maintains that “the way the Jews have been treated in Arab countries points to a major dysfunction in Arab society: the inability to tolerate anyone who is different from the mainstream, whether non-Sunni Muslims or minority non-Muslims.”

Throughout the book, Julius refers to these displaced Jews as Mizrahi, which she points out is a Hebrew term deriving from Eidot Ha'Mitzrah, Jews from the East. “It denotes 'eastern' or 'oriental' Jews that have been settled in the Middle East and North Africa since biblical times.” It also includes Jews of the greater Babylonian diaspora (present-day Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the southern ex-Soviet republics). Nowadays, it also comprises Jews from Yemen, the Indian subcontinent, and Ethiopia. Julius uses the term 'Mizrahi' as a catch-all. However, she does mention that the term is technically inaccurate when describing North African (Maghrebi) communities since these are geographically westerly-Morocco is to the west of much of western Europe.

The book divides itself into eleven chapters and concludes with an extensive bibliography, appendices, and an index.

Beginning with the chapter, Over a Millennium before Islam, Julius reminds her readers that the Jewish community in the Middle East goes back to biblical times. Referring to the prophet Ezekiel, we learn that he is one of seventeen Biblical figures buried in Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The Jewish importance in these countries cannot be underestimated. They played a significant role in shaping the culture of these countries. Regrettably, this seems to be forgotten.

We often hear about the coexistence of the Muslim and Jewish communities, however, Julius believes that this is not precisely the case and is a myth, other than the fact that there did exist a kind of symbiosis. There was never an equal relationship as the term coexistence would imply. Throughout the book, Julius provides ample evidence to back up her position. As she states, even any resemblance of coexistence all ended in the course of one generation where the majority of Jews had to flee from ten Arab countries. Most found refuge in Israel while others found refuge in England, the USA, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and other countries.

Several other themes are examined, including antisemitism, which Julius differentiates from European antisemitism, the concept of dhimmitude and the dhimmi syndrome, the Mufti and the Nazis, virulent nationalism, Anti-Zionism, the Israeli attitude towards these Jews, and numerous other well-researched topics. 

Quite compelling is the brief first-hand personal narratives that appear in the appendices that are recounted by those individuals who had to flee from one of the ten Muslim countries as they were considered persona non grata, which was the case of my own wife who lived in Egypt and eventually found her way with her family to Canada. 

Julius is the co-founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. For several years she has been organizing events to raise awareness of the history and culture of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. She has blogged and wrote about the subject, thus providing her with ample material to write her book. Her parents had fled Iraq in 1950 and found refuge in England. Throughout her childhood, she had been well aware of her family's connection with Iraq.