Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel » Lyn Julius

This Shavuot pogrom haunts us still

Lyn Julius — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:19:32 +0000

Salim Fattal was just eleven when the two-day Baghdad pogrom known as the Farhud erupted on Shavuot 72 years ago, yet its memory is engraved deep in his soul. Despite the passage of time, the shrieks and wails of the pogrom’s 179 Jewish victims still echo in his ears. On 1 June, the first day [...]

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If Gideon Levy wills it, it is a nightmare

Lyn Julius — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:33:10 +0000

Gideon Levy may be the most hated man in Israel, or the most heroic, but the controversial Haaretz columnist has a dream. Recently, he expressed his enthusiasm for turning Israel into ‘one just state for two peoples.’ One state for two peoples? It has already existed for a while now. More than two peoples live in [...]

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Goodbye Carmen, hello Magda

Lyn Julius — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:19:14 +0000

The king is dead, long live the king. Or in the case of Cairo’s Jewish community – the queen is dead, long live the queen. Carmen Weinstein, 82 (or according to some reports, 84), who led the community over the last 15 years, was buried on Thursday but her successor had already been chosen on [...]

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Breaking the ‘Jew taboo’

Lyn Julius — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:05:49 +0000

In the week that Jews all over the world sat down to mark their biblical exodus from Egypt, an Egyptian director was struggling for the right to show a film on the 20th century exodus of the country’s Jews. Despite an attempt to block ‘Jews of Egypt’s release on security grounds, Amir Ramses finally won [...]

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In the Apartheid Oscars, Arab states win hands down

Lyn Julius — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:19:04 +0000

Roll up, roll up for Israel Apartheid Week – a global, multimedia extravaganza devoted to cementing the comparison between the new international pariah, Israel, and the old racist regime in South Africa. And it’s coming to a campus near you. Anyone who knows anything about Israel will tell you that the comparison is invidious and malicious. Israeli [...]

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The myth of Palestinian innocence

Lyn Julius — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:18:30 +0000

My organisation, Harif, aims to tell the story of 2,500 years of Jewish history and culture in what is known as the Arab world. It’s a story with a dramatic ending: 99 percent of these Jews – numbering a million in 1948 – have fled in the space of one generation. When people learn about [...]

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Ideological Jew-hatred: the great cover-up

Lyn Julius — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:45:19 +0000

Readers of the New York Times awoke last week to hard evidence that President Morsi of Egypt was an antisemite. (So did readers of the Times of London, Deutsche Welle, the Huffington Post, the BBC website and just about every major news medium.) In a TV interview recorded in 2010, the President, who heads the [...]

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How Algeria lost its Jews

Lyn Julius — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:55:06 +0000

A forest of velvet bags hangs from the ceiling as you enter the special exhibition on the Jews of Algeria currently at the Musee d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaisme in Paris. The bags are shaped like New York Police Department badges, each richly embroidered or embossed with a boy’s name in gold or silver thread. [...]

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Hamas’ anti-Jewish war began in 1930s Egypt

Lyn Julius — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:47:32 +0000

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire, but no one is under any illusions. The latest round in the Gaza-Israeli war will end in another extended lull, and the two sides will be no closer to peace. Well-meaning politicians, opinion-formers and do-gooders talk about the need for peace. The two sides must sit down [...]

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How the Left was hoodwinked about Israel

Lyn Julius — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:32:01 +0000

There was a time when the Left could simultaneously support Israel and the fight for Algerian independence. Not any more. So what has changed? Part of the answer lies in a rich and thoughtful New York Times article, “The European Left and its trouble with the Jews” by Colin Shindler, emeritus professor at the School [...]

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Why it can be ‘cool’ to suppress Mizrahi history

Lyn Julius — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:53:39 +0000

Arriving at Ben Gurion Airport last month, I sat next to a pleasant young American Jew on the sherut bus to Jerusalem. “What are you here for?” the young man asked. When I told him I was attending a conference on Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he thought for a moment.” You mean, about the [...]

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The media in disarray over Jewish refugees

Lyn Julius — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:54:01 +0000

Whatever else you might say about Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s campaign for recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The Arab press and media are in disarray; the campaign has brought forth what Ayalon has termed “extreme and babbling responses” from the [...]

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No cats in America for Hanan Ashrawi

Lyn Julius — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:33:07 +0000

Now we know: there is no such thing as Jewish refugees from Arab countries. You heard it from no less than Hanan Ashrawi, PLO executive member and spokesperson. Here is what Ashrawi wrote in an article printed in a number of Arab media outlets: The claim that Jews who emigrated to Israel, which is supposed [...]

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Clueless in Cleveland about Jewish refugees

Lyn Julius — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:37:27 +0000

I must confess that I don’t make a habit of reading the Cleveland Jewish News, but a commentary by Cliff Savren caught my eye the other day. Entitled “Arab and Jewish refugees not alike,” the piece criticizes the current campaign in the US to create an equivalence between Arab and Jewish refugee rights. A bill introduced [...]

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The BBC’s talent for misrepresenting Mizrahim

Lyn Julius — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:02:19 +0000

A BBC website piece on a young Israeli Arab woman who won a popular Israeli TV music talent show back in April almost made me choke on my cornflakes today. If there is one news medium that can manage to politicize an innocuous story and spin it into a series of misleading tropes about Arabs and [...]

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