In Ishmael's House Quotes

“synagogue compound.9 The other Jew, some forty years his junior, was Zebulon Simantov. He was interviewed in 2008 for National Public Radio. He was then living alone in a small room next to the crumbling synagogue in Kabul. His wife and two daughters lived in Israel. Simantov often contemplated joining them, but staying in Afghanistan, he explained, was ‘the only way to keep the country’s Jewish history alive. I don’t want myJewish heritage erased. My father was a rabbi, my grandfather was a rabbi. We were a big, religious family.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“André Aciman’s letter reflected a widespread concern that, even though the first decade of the Twenty–First Century was closing with a search for reconciliation and understanding between Christian and Muslim societies, Jews who had lived in Muslim lands would not be remembered, nor their hopes for justice upheld.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“spoke in Cairo to the Muslim world, calling for American–Muslim reconciliation, the New York Times published a letter from André Aciman, a Jew who had left Egypt with his family in 1964. Aciman wrote that ‘with all the President’s talk of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” and shared “principles of justice and progress,” neither he nor anyone around him, and certainly no one in the audience, bothered to notice one small detail missing from the speech: he forgot me. 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”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“which he said that it was ‘imperative’ to raise the issue at Annapolis. Haddad calculated that the amount of land and property that the Jews had been forced to leave behind in Iraq, Egypt and Morocco totalled 100,000 square kilometres, five times the size of the State of Israel.19”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“also perpetuated by the United Nations’ annual renewal of their status as refugees. The Jews from Muslim lands, despite having been legally recognised as refugees historically, were not perceived as refugees in recent decades, having been integrated into society in Israel and other countries. Eli Timan, an Iraqi Jew living and working in London, commented: ‘The difference is that we got on with our life, worked hard and progressed so that today there is not a single Jewish refugee from Arab lands.’16 It had been the goal of the Jewish refugees to become citizens, and in this they had succeeded.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Iraq, later reflected that from a cultural standpoint, Iraq ‘suffered a big shock when the Jews left.’ One reason was that ‘all of Iraq’s famous musicians and composers were Jewish,’ as were a large portion of its other artists. In addition, ‘Jews were so central to commercial life in Iraq that business across the country used to shut down on Saturdays because it was the Jewish Shabbat. They were the most prominent members of every elite profession–bankers, doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, etc.’ In Kashi’s view, had the Jews stayed, they would have”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“identity. One such Israeli was Sasson Somekh, who left Iraq at the age of seventeen, and who became Professor of Literature at Tel Aviv University and a close friend of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mafouz. An Israeli expert on Arabic literature, he served for three years in Egypt as director of the Israeli Academic Centre in Cairo. Professor Somekh explained why he considered himself an ‘Arab Jew’: ‘An Arab Jew is someone who is immersed, or grew up in, Arab culture, with Arabs, and knows the way of the life.’ When he learned at school of the Arab defeat of the Byzantines and the Persians in the Seventh Century, he ‘would be on their side.’ When he learned of Saladin’s defeat of the Crusaders he ‘was very happy–as an Iraqi, as an Arab.’ He added:”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The immigrants from Europe, almost all of them having spent months, even years, in Displaced Persons’ camps (DP camps) in the British and American occupation zones in Germany, were mostly the penniless, exhausted, traumatised remnant of murdered families and communities lost in the Holocaust, fleeing the lands where they and their ancestors had lived and worked for hundreds of years. The immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries were mostly the penniless, exhausted, traumatised expellees who had been made refugees as a result of the sudden, furious reaction to the creation of the State of Israel by the governments and peoples among whom they and their ancestors had lived and worked for 1,400 years.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Conference of 1991, when Israel and its Arab neighbours began face–to–face talks to resolve the Palestinian Arab problem. Following the conference, the Syrian Government, headed by Hafez al–Assad, agreed to abandon two decades of implacable resistance to Jewish emigration. All 3,886Jews in Syria were free to leave–for anywhere but Israel.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“On 20 October 1992, when there were still a thousand Jews waiting to leave Syria, the Syrian Government called a halt to the exodus.53 Judy Feld Carr and her supporters renewed their campaign, helped by the Canadian and American Ambassadors in Damascus. After three months the Syrian Government relented. of the 3,656 Jews saved by Judy Feld Carr, her supporters and the many international Jewish welfare agencies, 1,262 made their way via the United States and Canada to Israel. A climax of celebration came on 18 October 1994, when the former Chief Rabbi of Syria, Avraham Hamra, landed at Ben–Gurion airport with his wife, his six children, his mother and five of his brothers and sisters. Those watching were delighted when”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The plight of the Jews of Syria soon became well publicised. In 1970, during a meeting in Paris of the International Conference for the Deliverance of Jews in the Middle East, there was a dramatic moment when a Jewish escapee from Syria–masking her face to protect her identity and the family she had left behind in Syria–spoke of the harsh conditions under which the Syrian Jews were living.41 In the following year, the World Jewish Congress, based in Paris, stated that ‘apart from the Jewish problem in Soviet Russia, the Syrian plight has become our problem No. 2.’ The Congress sent out a memorandum with details of the ‘tragic situation of the Jews in Syria and request”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The fourth and fifth laws, respectively: ‘Jews are normally subject to a 10 p.m. curfew’ and ‘Jews are allowed six years elementary schooling only.’ The remaining laws, in sequence: ‘Jewish houses in the town of Kamishli are to be marked in red’; ‘Jews are barred from jobs in the public service, public institutions and banks’; ‘Government officials and military personnel are forbidden to buy in Jewish shops’; ‘Foreigners may not visit the Jewish quarters”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Syria, following the 1967 defeat of the Syrian forces and the loss of the Golan Heights to Israel, new regulations were imposed on the country’s 3,500 Jews. These new laws harked back to a much earlier time when the Covenant of Omar could be burdensome in the extreme. There were twelve laws in all. The first: ‘The Jewish right to emigrate is completely forbidden. This applies even to Jews in Syria who hold foreign passports.’ The second: ‘Jews are forbidden to move more than three kilometres from their place of residence. Those wishing to travel further must apply for a special permit.’ The third: ‘Identity cards issued to Jews are stamped in red with the word Mussawi (Jew).”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“In Israel, Shlomo Hillel called a press conference–broadcast by the BBC–to protest the executions. Hillel later reflected: ‘I doubt whether in all the two thousand five hundred years of Jewish history in Iraq, there had been anything to match the sheer malevolence of executing nineJews on the same day.’ Even the Egyptian Government condemned the hangings as ‘doing harm”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“One of the most productive, cultured and creative Jewish communities in the world was almost at an end. President Nasser then ordered Egyptian Jewry’s contribution to the life and prosperity of modern Egypt to be erased from all Egyptian history books.14”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Precious three years and three months were wasted. I am writing this so that the whole world knows what the Egyptian authorities did to us simply because we were Jews, even Egyptian indigenous Jews who were in Egypt over three thousand years before the Arabs invaded and conquered the whole Middle East in the Seventh Century.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Between 1956 and 1961 more than 35,000 Moroccan Jews left clandestinely for Israel under the auspices of the Mossad. In 1960, the same year that he masterminded the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, Isser Harel, travelled to Morocco as a tourist. His visit there convinced him that manyJews wished to leave, and he appointed Alex Gatmon to be in charge of the Mossad operations in Morocco, under Ephraim Ronel in Paris.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The Spanish dictator, General Franco–who was widely believed to be descended from Jews forcibly converted to Christianity in the Fifteenth Century–allowed the emigrants unimpeded transit. Ships crowded with Moroccan Jews travelled again and again, under cover of darkness, from Atlantic and Mediterranean ports in North Africa to France.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Regina Waldman, a young Jewish girl living in Libya, who was nine years old in 1957, recalled an incident in her own school. A teacher asked the children in an arithmetic lesson: ‘If you have ten Jews and you kill five, how many do you have left?’ That, she reflected many years later, ‘was my first taste of hate.’13”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Two Yemeni Jews, Hannah and Saadya Akiva, gave a similarly bleak account of Yemen in the aftermath of the Second World War. Speaking to the historian Bat Ye’or, they recalled how it was forbidden for a Jew to work in agriculture, to write in Arabic, to possess firearms, or to ride on a horse or a camel. Jews could only ride on donkeys, and even then they were obliged to ride sidesaddle in order to jump to the ground whenever they passed a Muslim–as in the early days of the Covenant of Omar more than 1,200 years earlier. In the streets in Yemen, Jewish pedestrians had to pass Muslims on the left. Although Jewish cobblers made shoes for Muslims, they were not allowed to wear them. Hannah and Saadya Akiva explained: ‘The Arabs forbade us to wear shoes, so that we hid them when, as children, we went searching for wood for cooking. When we were far enough away, we put on our shoes; on returning we took them off and hid them in the branches. The Arabs frequently searched us, and if they found them, they punished us and forbade us to collect wood. We had to lower our heads, accepting insults and humiliations. The Arabs called us”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Like the Egyptian authorities, the Iraqi Government was implacable in its opposition both to Israel and to any Jews who might try–as did tens of thousands–to fulfil the ancient Jewish longing for a return to the Jewish homeland. Babylon (Iraq) had been the first Jewish place of exile 2,534 years earlier. But more than three hundred Jews were arrested in the first days of the Arab–Israeli war. They were brought to trial before military courts martial and fined or imprisoned. The charge against them was that they had given support to Israel.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“the Jewish Quarter in Rabat, making thousands of Jews prisoners.4 At the same time, following the Allied liberation of French North Africa, the Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres, the FFL) kept the Vichy laws against the Jews on the statute book. On learning of this during a visit to Algiers early in 1943, Winston”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Churchill was right on both counts. Between 1922 and 1939 more Arabs had entered Palestine than Jews. These were Muslim immigrants, including many illegals, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Syria–as well as from Transjordan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.37 These immigrants were drawn to Palestine by its opportunities for work and its growing prosperity–opportunities and prosperity often created by the Jews there. In 1948 many of these Arab immigrants were to be included in the statistics of ‘Palestinian’ Arab refugees.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“There were twenty–four synagogues in Baghdad in 1935; the Masuda Shemtob and Soffer synagogues were founded in that year, while the oldest, the 1,400–year–old Great Synagogue, dated back more than a hundred years before Islam. Among the Jewish schools in Baghdad were the Albert David Sassoon School for boys–one of nine Jewish boys’ schools–and the Laura Kadourie School for Girls–one of two Jewish girls’ schools. In Baghdad, Basra and Hillah, Jewish schools all received government subsidies. The Jewish community was protected by the guarantee in the Iraqi Constitution of 1925 that the Jewish Spiritual Council had the right to deal with all matters pertaining to Jewish marriage, dowry, divorce, separation, alimony and the attestation of wills.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“More Jews were killed in the pogrom in Fez than in the Kishinev pogrom in Tsarist Russia nine years earlier. Yet the Kishinev pogrom, in which forty–nine Jews were murdered, had led to widespread protest throughout the Christian world by Jews and non–Jews alike. The Fez pogrom was reported far less widely–and then ignored.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“Jews volunteered to serve in the Ottoman Army as proof of their patriotism. The Istanbul–based Zionist newspaper Hamevasser repeatedly praised the participation of eighty Ottoman Jewish soldiers in the suppression of the Druze rebellion in southern Syria in 1910–11. This was a campaign in which more than fifty Jewish soldiers were wounded.4 Another effect of conscription was to prompt a new wave of Jewish migration. Thousands of young Jewish men left the Ottoman Empire to avoid being taken into the army. Many chose to cross the Atlantic and settle in the United States. In 1909 a Jewish community was founded in Portland, Oregon, made up of Jews from Rodosto on the Sea of Marmara.5”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The Jews of Daghestan believed that they were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. Their language, Tat, Tatti or Judaeo Tat, was a combination of Persian and Hebrew. They may well have been the descendants of Persian–Jewish soldiers who–in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries–were stationed in the lowlands of the Caucasus by”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The Jews are forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows.34 Jewish women are obliged to expose their faces in public.35 They must cover themselves with a two–coloured izar.36 The men must not wear fine clothes, the only material permitted them being a blue cotton fabric. They are forbidden to wear matching shoes. Every Jew is obliged to wear a piece of red cloth on his chest. A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street. He is forbidden to talk loudly to a Muslim.”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“The Alliance’s bulletin of 1893 expressed genuine enthusiasm in thanking Turkey. It read: ‘There are but few countries, even among those which are considered the most enlightened and the most civilized, where Jews enjoy a more complete equality than in Turkey.’ The Sultan had proved to be ‘a generous sovereign and protector of his Israelite”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands

“In 1867 a French Jew, Charles Netter, suggested to the Alliance a means to help Jews from Persia and Eastern Europe build new lives as farmers in Ottoman Palestine. With the organisation’s support, he went to Istanbul a year later and met the Grand Vizier of the Imperial State Council. Netter persuaded the Grand Vizier to procure a decree from the Sultan allowing the Alliance to lease land near Jaffa for a Jewish agricultural school. The Governor of Syria, Rashid Pasha, then authorised the purchase of a ninety–nine–year lease on 2,600 dunams (650 acres) of land.14 Netter built a school on this land in 1870, which he named Mikve Israel (‘The Hope of Israel’), serving as both principal and instructor there, and witnessing the beginnings of Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine.15”
― Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands