Point of No Return: Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries: Turkish synagogue vandalised after re-opening
One-stop blog on Jews from Arab and Muslim Countries and the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees, updated daily
Vandals spray-painted hate graffiti on the historic Istipol Synagogue in Istanbul just days after a one-time prayer service was held, the first in 65 years, the Turkish publication Today’s Zaman (picked up by the Jerusalem Post) reported. (With thanks: Eliyahu)
Vandals wrote “Terrorist Israel, there is Allah,” on the external walls of the structure in white paint, in the largely Jewish neighborhood of Balat.
“Writing anti-Israel speech on the wall [outside] of a synagogue is an act of anti-Semitism,” Ivo Molinas, editor-inchief of the Jewish community’s weekly newspaper Salom, said in an interview with the Turkish newspaper.
“There is widespread anti-Semitism voiced in Turkey and it gets in the way of celebrating the richness of cultural diversity in this country,” he added.
Molinas was upset at the linkage made between the Jewish community in Turkey and Israel, emphasizing that the Turkish Jewish community is not connected to Israeli policy.
In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.
This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.
(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)