Tag: International Jewry

It is deeply regrettable that recent political manoeuvres in Israel appear likely to bolster the credibility and electoral prospects of Otzma Yehudit, a party comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

While of course events in Venezuela are still very much up in the air, for a community long in decline, there is today new reason to hope, however warily, for Venezuela’s Jews.

A new CNN survey has once again put antisemitism into the news headlines. According to the survey of 7000 people across seven European countries, as many as 25% of Europeans have traditional antisemitic attitudes.

History has been deeply unkind to the Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, and so too has the historical record.

Despite being delayed several times before, Iraqi Kurdistan is now set to vote in an independence referendum on 25 September 2017.

The Kurdish people are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, at approximately 30 million people. They speak "various dialects of their own language, Kurdish, although governments have sometimes banned its usage", and are largely Sunni Muslim. Although they have no state of their own, they are indigenous to a mountainous region which covers territory in present day Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia.

I am a forgotten Jew. My roots are nearly 2,600 years old, my ancestors made landmark contributions to world civilisation, and my presence was felt from North Africa to the Fertile Crescent - but I barely exist today. You see, I am a Jew from the Arab world.

The advantages the Jews experienced under the rule of the Shah - high socioeconomic status, strong ties to Israel and the United States - became liabilities in the age of the Ayatollahs. As in many other dark eras in Jewish history, the Jews were accused of stealing the country's treasures, and flyers were circulated throughout Teheran urging vengeance against them. There was mass confiscation of wealth along with rampant antisemitism and violence against the Jewish population, and as the streets filled up with hordes of people chanting "death to America" and "death to Israel", many Persian Jews fled to those very countries.

Some of the Jews who remained in Iran decided to embrace the revolution and the nation's new rulers...

Some years ago, I was invited to attend the Annual Policy Conference of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. At that time, attendance was in the hundreds and the agenda narrowly focused.

This year I returned to AIPAC as an invited speaker on the subject "Israel and Asia - New Frontiers?" - in recognition of AIJAC's work in this region.

Estimates of total attendance at the conference ranged from 14,000 to as many as 17,000 people...

Thatcher's reputation as the "Iron Lady" reflected her self-proclaimed status as a conviction politician, and this is echoed in the eulogies delivered following her death. Though her legacy has divided opinion, when it came to Israel and the Jewish people, she is remembered for her strong, supportive and effective foreign policy credentials, and her dedication to fighting antisemitism in all its guises.

As a member of Parliament, representing a large Jewish constituency, and as Britain's longest serving PM in over a hundred years, Thatcher was widely recognised as both a true friend and strong ally to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel.