The 'Forgotten Refugees' Remembered in Film

Abstract

Cooper reviews The Forgotten Refugees directed by Michael Grynszpan.

The 'Forgotten Refugees' Remembered in Film

"The Forgotten Refugees" a film; executive producer, Ralph Avi Goldwasser; produced and directed by Michael Grynszpan; co-produced and directed by Tommy Schwarcz; written by J.J. Salman; released by Isra TV and The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership, 2006.

It is the striking contrast between the interview with musician Yair Dalal-who identifies himself as Judeo-Araband the interview with Yitshak Dvash, survivor of the 1945 Libyan riots, that best encapsulates the film "The Forgotten Refugees," being shown at Jewish film festivals throughout the United States, as well as on several Public Broadcasting System affiliates.

Bedecked in a flowing white garment, positioned with the Mediterranean Sea behind him, and speaking in English, Dalai tells of the prominent place the Jews once held in Iraq's music scene. Born in Israel to parents who were from Iraq, he proudly describes his role in continuing this Iraqi cultural tradition both in Israel and in his performances abroad.

In juxtaposition to this cosmopolitan scene, the elderly, modestly dressed Dvash sits in a synagogue and speaks about the brutality he endured as ajew who was born and grew up in Libya. "They ran after me, caught me and beat me until they finally got tired," he says, referring to his experience in the 1945 riots. "They wanted to cut off my hands," Dvash continues, as the camera zooms in on his severely disfigured wrists and fingers

Dalal's deep identification with his Middle Eastern roots and Dvash's experience of persecution and suffering are powerful tropes that appear throughout the documentary. Both are revisited through interviews with others who also are Jewish immigrants, or descendents of Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. A rich array of rare, original footage is used, as well, alongside narration to tell the stories of these forgotten refugees.

"The Forgotten Refugees" is part of a slowly growing library of books and films that call attention to the modern experiences of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. Given that these groups constitute one-quarter of the world's Jewish population, and one-half of Israel's Jewish population, these new works are critical if we are to expand the horizon of Judaic Studies, an academic discipline that has traditionally been Western- and Euro-centric.

Outside of the academy, a growing interest in the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience also has been a welcome development. Until now, the Shoah and the foundation of the State of Israel have been the two most powerful events to shape contemporary perspectives on Jewish identity, whereas the migration of Jews from Muslim lands has been broadly overlooked in public discourse. Yet, it is this chapter that is most critical for making sense out of Jewish-Muslim and Arab-Israeli dynamics, both so central to the contemporary Jewish condition. If for this reason alone, "The Forgotten Refugees" is an important film that deserves widespread recognition. It is in this spirit that I offer a critique of the film, which-despite its significant contribution-suffers from a number of flaws.

The first is that the film's two major themes-as expressed by Dalai and Dvash-do not work comfortably together. No effort is made to reconcile the Jews' strong ties to their Middle Eastern and North African heritage with the persecution they endured in the region. This problem becomes particularly acute in the segments entitled "Dhimmi" and 'Judeo-Arab Culture."

In the former, the narrator explains that the Jews' presence in Muslim lands was historically tolerated, as long as they accepted their humiliated and subjugated position of dhimmi.* Dating as far back as the seventh century, when Islam was introduced to the region Jews' inferior status was marked by numerous restrictions.

Fast-forwarding from the distant past to recent history, a number of the interviewees testify to the persecution they faced as dhimmi. Vivienne Roumani-Den describes what it was like to be a "second-class citizen" in Libya, feeling that she had to constantly ingratiate herself to the Muslims among whom she lived. Linda Abu Aziz tells of young children throwing stones at her in the streets of Iraq, while chanting 'Jew traitor," and Gina Waldman Bublil tells of her experience peeking through the curtains of her home to watch mobs on the street lifting their fists and shouting, "Death to the Jews."

These individual stories are pieced together and culminate in the massive mid-2Oth century violence experienced by Dvash and so many others, and finally in the expulsion of die Jews from their homes in the midst of anticolonial, nationalist uprisings, and a powerful wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment.

This segment is immediately followed by "Judeo-Arab Culture," which draws on black-and-white footage of Egyptian-Jewish diva, Lyla Murad, who was wildly popular in the Arab world's movie and music industries, and then focuses on Yair Dalal's Judeo-Arab music. Testimonials follow: Joseph Abdel Wahed, an Egyptian Jew, speaks of a relative who worked on drafting Egypt's constitution. Linda Abu Aziz remembers her father, who was well versed in both the Torah and the Quran. Mordechai Ben Porat, another Iraqi Jew, tells of his Muslim friends who often joined his family for festive Shabbat meals.

Viewers watching these two segments cannot help but wonder how it is that dhimmi status was an essential feature of the Jewish condition in Muslim lands and yet the Jews were so integrated in the regions' social fabric.

The few moments in which the film does acknowledge the difficulty posed by presenting Dvash's trope alongside Dalal's are important ones. Wahed, for example, tells of a dear friendship he shared with a Muslim boy during his youth in Egypt. Their close Muslim-Jewish camaraderie was suddenly pierced when the friend unexpectedly proclaimed, "One day we will slit the throats of all Jews." Wahed concludes his story by stating, "This is the contradiction we faced."

Although Wahed offers no further insight into how someone can be both a friend and an enemy, the fact that he classifies it as a "contradiction" is a relief. So. too, it comes as a relief to hear Abu Aziz describe her mixed sentiments of affection and resentment for the Iraqi people as "a problem." These brief statements suggest that, in fact, there is great difficulty in making sense out of this conflict-filled past.

In addition to the personal arena, the tensions that emerge from living with Dvash's story together with Dalal's have broad historical and political ramifications. They point to the challenge of making sense out of die Jews' age-old diaspora experience in Muslim lands, on the one hand, and their recent history of en masse migration, on the other.

It is this issue that brings me to a second flaw in the film. In the same way that "The Forgotten Refugee" raises questions relating to the struggle of living with ones Jewishness alongside ones Iraqi-ness (or Moroccan-ness, Libyan-ness, etc.), so too it opens up questions surrounding the ways in which the Jews' long diaspora history in the Muslim world is still yet to be reconciled with their sudden population upheaval. Although the film is intended to directly address the Jews' displacement, it actually raises the question-in an unself-conscious manner-of why this large-scale population-movement occurred. A variety of reasons are offered, but none are developed.

Only if one pays careful attentionand knows something about the politics and history of the region-can one identify three different reasons the film offers to explain the Jews' massive emptying-out from Muslim lands. The first is that the creation of the State of Israel "unshackled the Jew" from 14 centuries "of subjugation to the rule and control" of the Muslims. Taking advantage of this new opportunity for freedom from their dhimmi status, they left their age-old diaspora homelands.

The second also involves the State of Israel, but rather than serving as a solution to a problem (providing the long-oppressed dhimmi with a place to go), it becomes the cause of a problem. Although not explicitly stated, this explanation assumes that, despite being relegated to the religious category dhimmi, the Jews lived relatively prosperous and peaceful lives under Muslim rule, and later under colonial rule. This status quo was shattered with the creation of the State of Israel, which translated into antagonism against local Jewish populations, eventually leading to their expulsion.

The third is related to the emergence of nation-states throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Amidst a "tide of nationalism"-the narrator explains-there was little tolerance for the Jewish minority, who were identified as "scapegoats" for social discontent.

These three reasons draw upon three different analytical frameworks to understand the Jews' mass migration. According to the first, the root cause is a persistent, historical Muslim-Jewish problem, in which Jews under Muslim rule were relegated to an inferior status and lived with the threat of persecution. When the possibility of escape presented itself with the creation of the State of Israel, they took advantage of the opportunity and left. According to the second, the root cause is an Arab-Israeli problem. Jews and Arabs could live together, as long as the Jews laid no claim to a sovereign existence. Once they declared an independent state in the Middle East, peaceful relations were ruptured and the Jews were expelled from the diaspora-homes. According to the third, the root cause was neither a Muslim-Jewish one, nor an Arab-Jewish one. Rather, it is a problem of minority groups in the Muslim world, and can be more fully understood alongside the story of persecution of the Kurds, Copts and the region's other minority groups.

Rather than drawing attention to these three reasons and the complex interrelated ways in which they played out in different countries and time periods, the exodus is collapsed into what appears to be single event. As such, geographical distinctions are not made. The Jews' migration from Algeria to France for example, is not distinguished from the Jews' migration from Iraq to Israel.

So, too, temporal distinctions are not made. The 1945 riots in Libya, for example, appear to blend seamlessly into the internment of Egypt's Jews in 1967. Footage of mobs, hangings and transit camps are not dated or labeled, giving the viewer the sense that the time and place in which the film clips are situated are irrelevant. This presentation may lead any skeptical or inquisitive viewer to question the film's accountability, both in terms of its narrative and its very basic premise that, in fact, these 850,000 migrants were "refugees." A more nuanced narrative, one that explains the disappearance of the Jewish population from North Africa and the Middle East as a multifaceted process, would be complicated to produce, but would ultimately prove more compelling.

Finally, I would suggest that among the most powerful aspects of the film are the interviews with those individuals whose lives in North Africa and the Middle East were uprooted. The filmmakers, however, again merge the various details of each person's story into a single, encompassing narrative. We never learn, for example, when and how each person made the decision-or forcibly had the decision made for them-to leave. What kinds of choices did they have (or not have) in deciding where to go and with whom? By overlooking these and other particulars, an opportunity to learn about the ways in which these macro-events impacted individuals in intimate ways is missed.

Nevertheless, the film goes a long way in beginning to open up discussion about the contemporary Sephardi/ Mizrahi experience. It is not trivial that it begins with Abu Aziz's statement, "I didn't want to think about what happened, so I buried my past." Indeed, testimonials about the Sephardi/Mizrahi experience are unfortunately still very rare both in film and in print, leaving the personal stories of this chapter in history still largely untold. Perhaps in a decade or two from now, "The Forgotten Refugees" may be regarded as one of the early films that launched a new genre of discussion about the lives of North African and Middle Eastern Jews before, during and after their massive upheaval. But the generation that lived through this is an aging one. If work is to be done to ensure that their memories of this traumatic end to a millennia-long diaspora history are not forgotten, it must be done with urgency.

Footnote

* In its simplest sense, a dhimmi is a non-Muslim monotheist living as a second-class citizen in a Muslim society ruled by Islamic law.