Erased From History – Remembrance Day for Jewish Refugees From Arab Lands

Today isn’t just a memorial date – it’s a reminder of how much of our story gets erased.

My family was expelled from Syria.
Not “encouraged to leave.” Not “relocated.” Expelled.
Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Cairo – cities where Jews lived for thousands of years – emptied out in a single generation. Citizenship revoked. Homes seized. Lives uprooted overnight.

And yet somehow, we’re told we’re “white colonizers.”
Think about the audacity of that.
People with no connection to our history feel comfortable redefining it – while the lived experiences of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews are conveniently edited out.

Here’s the twist most people never hear:

The region didn’t lose its Jews by accident.
They didn’t “move on.” They were pushed out – violently, systematically, and with zero international recognition. That silence didn’t just grow louder after 1948; it became policy.

So remembering this day isn’t about what happened “back then.”
It’s about correcting the story being told right now.

Jews are not outsiders to the Middle East.
Half of Israel’s Jewish population comes from families like mine – people who fled Arab lands, rebuilt from nothing, and were never given refugee status, compensation, or even acknowledgment.

For my family, for Syrian Jews, for every community erased from the map –
we remember.
We speak it out loud.
And we’re done letting anyone else narrate who we are.