In November 1942, as German troops were driven out of Egypt, an Anglo–American force landed in North Africa as part of an Allied invasion plan. Making a major contribution to the success of that plan was a five–hundred–strong Algerian Jewish Resistance group. The group was headed by José Aboulker, who had organised an uprising that paralyzed Vichy French communications and captured strategic points in Algiers on the eve of the Allied landings.
In the immediate aftermath of the North African landings, local Muslims took advantage of the chaos that followed by turning on the Jews, who for two and a half years had already suffered under the severity of Vichy discrimination. A Moroccan Jew, Maurice Marrachi, set out a long list of Muslim ‘abuses of power’ in letters to American and British authorities. His list included the burglary of Jewish homes, extortion of money and, in a coy allusion to rape, ‘passing the night in the company of the mistress of the house.’1
A British journalist, Philip Jordan, described similar crimes after he entered the Tunisian town of Gafsa with the Allied troops a few hours after the town had been abandoned by the Germans. ‘All the Jews in the town,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘have been pillaged by the Arabs acting under German encouragement. Even the doors and windows have been stolen. It is horrible.’2 According to the German military archives, it was Italian soldiers who had encouraged the Arabs to loot the Jewish homes and shops. The German military police, having confiscated the loot, gave it to a local Arab charity.3
Angered at the Jewish relief and delight at the Allied liberation, Arab troops who had been part of the Vichy forces locked the gates of the Jewish Quarter in Rabat, making thousands of Jews prisoners.4 At the same time, following the Allied liberation of French North Africa, the Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres, the FFL) kept the Vichy laws against the Jews on the statute book. On learning of this during a visit to Algiers early in 1943, Winston Churchill insisted that the laws be repealed. It was not a moment too soon. Particular hostility had been shown towards those Jews who had enabled the Allies to come ashore. Bernard Karsenty, one of the members of the Jewish Resistance group that had received the American commander of the land forces, General Mark Clark, on a secret visit before the November 1942 landings, was forced to flee the country. The brothers Lucian and José Chich, who had also helped the Allies, were threatened. Seven Jews were imprisoned.5
Other persecutions by local Muslim rulers continued. On 27 April 1943 the United States Vice Consul in Casablanca reported that ‘it seems indubitable that there is a systematic persecution of the Jews by the Pasha of Beni–Mellal.’ Jews had been expelled from their homes and shops for up to a week, and ‘arbitrary economic measures’ had been directed against them, including a ban on any Jewish trade in vegetables or poultry. There had also been random arrests and beatings. Britiz ben Shalom Elfassy was beaten and imprisoned for asking an Arab to pay for the rental of a bicycle. David Cohen, who was half–blind, was sentenced to six weeks in prison for not saluting a Muslim official.6
Six months later, Jews were attacked in Fez. The British consul in Rabat reported to London soon afterward that ‘a fairly serious riot’ had occurred in Fez, ‘originating I am told in an attempt by young Moors to molest a young Jew’s girlfriend …’7
While the persecution of Jews continued, so did Jewish efforts to immigrate to Palestine. In 1943, Jews reached Palestine after fleeing from Yemen. The following year, Jews escaped illegally from Afghanistan and travelled both to Iran and to India before they too reached Palestine. Egypt refused to issue transit visas to allow Jews to travel overland through Cairo. From Libya, Jews were able to make their way legally to Palestine in 1944, when the British Mandate authority issued them twenty Palestine certificates. The first group of Libyan Jewish immigrants went to a kibbutz.
Encouraged by the successful emigration of their fellow Jews, Libyan Jewish youngsters enrolled in Zionist agricultural training to prepare for life in Palestine. Two Zionist youth clubs, Ben Yehuda and Maccabi, which had been closed by the Italians, were reopened. Two farms were established in Libya where young Libyan Jews underwent training for eventual farming life in Palestine. One of the farms was at Colonia Vardia, six miles outside Tripoli, the other in Zawia, twenty–five miles from Tripoli. Jewish history, the history of Zionism and modern Hebrew were taught in the Jewish schools in Tripoli and Benghazi.8
A few months after the first twenty Palestine certificates were issued in Tripoli, Libyan Jews were allocated another twenty; twelve went to Zionist agricultural pioneers. Britain proceeded to allow a steady wave of Libyan Jews to leave for Palestine.9
In many Muslim lands, the conditions that had prompted Jewish migration to Palestine remained unchanged as the Second World War came to an end. A report from the British Embassy in Kabul, sent to London on 29 December 1944, described the 3,350 Jews of Afghanistan as ‘on the whole poor and of indifferent quality.’Jealousy at Jewish trading success, especially in karakul wool, had led to their expulsion from Andkhoi and Mazar–i–Sharif in 1934. A successful Jewish trading firm in Herat, with representatives in Kandahar, was being forced to sell half its shares each year to the Afghan National Bank. Some two hundred Jews had applied to emigrate, but, the British Embassy reported, ‘it is doubtful if they will be able to find any countries willing to welcome them as immigrants.’10
The situation of Jews in all Muslim lands quickly worsened. A new and disastrous turning point came on 22 March 1945, with the formation of the Arab League in Cairo. The League’s first resolutions included a restriction on Egyptian Muslim contact with those who were called ‘supporters of Zionism,’ that is, all Egyptian Jews. In the months that followed, anti–Zionist incitement and anti–J ewish violence spread throughout the Arab world. On 2 October 1945 the main Arab newspaper in the Libyan city of Tripoli published a startling account of a meeting in Damascus between Muslim religious leaders. These leaders had spoken of rumours about a United Nations plan to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews, and according to the newspaper had declared that ‘news of this sort aroused their scorn and led them to support any action aimed at eliminating the Jews from Arab countries.’11
The Muslim world, inspired by Arab nationalism but inflamed by Jewish nationalism, still considered Palestine as an Arab country and part of the Muslim patrimony, in which Jews could live only as a subject people. Further anti–Jewish riots broke out in Egypt on 2 November 1945 and continued on the following day. The British Embassy in Cairo sent two accounts to London of the information it had received from the Egyptian Director–General of Public Security. A ‘crowd of roughs’ had looted the shops of two Jewish–owned firms and a synagogue had been set on fire. The demonstrations in both Alexandria and Cairo had ‘all been anti–Jewish and definitely not anti–British.’ Five people had been killed and two hundred injured.12 The President of the Jewish community in Egypt, Salvator Cicurel, one of Egypt’s pre–war sporting legends and the head of the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, did his utmost to preserve the normalcy of Jewish life.13 It was a hard task. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al–Husseini, arrived in Egypt after fleeing in 1945 from France, where he was wanted as a war criminal, and wasted no time in stirring up anti–Zionist sentiment. Legislation against Jews proliferated. An Egyptian Companies Law, promulgated on 29 July 1947, insisted that seventy–five per cent of all employees in enterprises must be Egyptian. As eighty per cent of Egyptian Jews had held foreign passports for many generations, this new law was a blow and a setback.
Egypt was not the only country to be affected by the wave of anti–Zionist and anti–Jewish feeling. Starting on November 4 and continuing for four days, there were anti–Jewish riots in Tripoli and in six other Libyan towns. The violence was intensified by two particularly inflammatory false rumours: that the Grand Cadi and the Mufti of Tripoli had both been murdered, and that the Jews had set fire to the Sharia court. The New York Times was emphatic, however, that the ‘thirst for blood was greater than the thirst for loot or revenge.’14
The only deliberate acts of arson were committed against the Jews. During the riots, ten synagogues were looted and burned. In areas with mixed Arab and Jewish populations, the doors and shops of non–Jews had been marked in advance with special signs. On the first evening, the New York Times reported four days later, attacks that were ‘premeditated and coldly murderous’ were carried out by ‘individual Arabs’ and small gangs who broke into Jewish homes and shops.15 It was also reported that one Jew confronted the mob at his door with a meat cleaver, but the weapon was taken from his hand and used to cut open his chest.16
On the evening of November 5, as the attacks continued, the British authorities, who had been in control of Libya since the defeat of the German–Italian forces there in 1943, imposed a curfew. Despite this, on the morning of November 6, large–scale Arab attacks and looting were carried out against Jewish homes and businesses in the city. The nature of the killings was described by a Jewish eye–witness: ‘In order to carry out the slaughter, the attackers used various weapons: knives, daggers, sticks, clubs, iron bars, revolvers, and even hand–grenades. Generally, the victim was first struck on the head with a solid, blunt instrument and, after being knocked down, was finished off with a knife, dagger, or, in some cases, by having his throat cut.’17
That night, the killing of Jews spread east of Tripoli to the towns of Zawia and Zanzur. In Zanzur, 40 of the 120 Jews of the town were murdered. In Zanzur and Amrus, according to one eyewitness, ‘after having killed or injured their victims, the attackers poured benzine or petroleum over them and set them on fire, and ultimately those killed were so charred as to be unrecognizable. Grenades were used especially at Amrus against the synagogues as well as the houses. On some of the bodies signs of unimaginable cruelty could be discerned.’18
The Jewish leaders in Tripoli appealed to the British to send troops who would halt the attacks. After a forty–eight–hour delay, the British military commander took decisive steps: a State of Emergency was proclaimed; crowds carrying sticks or other offensive weapons were forbidden to gather; and British soldiers began patrolling the streets, searching passersby and entering Arab houses. On November 7 the British began arresting Arabs accused of attacking Jews and plundering Jewish homes. At Beni Ulid, the British evacuated the Jews from their Quarter as the attackers gathered for a final assault. In several other towns, the British surrounded the Jewish Quarters with a protective guard. Jewish self–defence was also effective in keeping the Arab attackers out of the Jewish Quarter of Tripoli–the Hara–where several thousand Jews from other parts of the city had taken refuge.
A total of 129 Libyan Jews were killed during the four days of attacks. One Arab lost his life during an attack on the Jewish Quarter. Twenty Jewish women were widowed and ninety–three children orphaned. In Tripoli alone, 150 Jews were seriously injured. In Misurata (Kussabat), many women and girls were raped, and then, in order to save their lives, were forced to denounce Judaism and embrace Islam. In the destruction of shops, an estimated 4,200 Jewish traders and artisans were made destitute. More than four thousand Jews fled their homes and took refuge in camps set up by the British Military Administration, where more than ten thousand were being fed each day during the first week after the attacks.
During the Libyan pogrom, there were many instances of Muslims showing kindness and courage. On November 11 the Libyan Jewish newspaper Settimana Israelítica reported that ‘many Arabs’ had risked their lives by saving Jews from the attackers by offering refuge in their homes.19
In the weeks following the attacks, efforts were made by the Muslim leadership to distance itself from the rioters and to build bridges with the Jewish community. On November 12 the Mufti of Tripolitania, Mohammed Abdul Assaad el–Alem, issued a fatwa ordering believers to return what had been stolen from the Jews.20 On November 27, encouraged by the British, a meeting was held in the British Military Administration hall in Tripoli between leading members of the Arab and Jewish communities. An Arab–Jewish Committee for Co–operation and Reconstruction was established, under two senior community leaders, the Muslim Cadi, Sheikh Mahmud Burchis, and the Jewish leader Halfalla Nahum. ‘All wise and sensible people on both sides,’ said the Cadi, ‘condemn such acts in the most absolute terms and desire only tranquility and peace.’ In reply, Halfalla Nahum stressed the need for ‘rebuilding mutual trust between the Arab and Jewish communities.’21
These were fine words, but the British Military Administration remained sceptical, writing in its annual report for 1945: ‘Leading Arab personalities severely censured this shameful aggression. But no general, deep–felt sense of guilt seems to animate the Arab community at large: nor has it been too active in offering help to the victims.’ This British report also referred to a new element in the relations between the Jews and Arabs of Libya: the ‘self–assertiveness’ of Libyan Jewish Zionists. ‘The growth of Zionism,’ the report concluded, ‘must be considered one of the motives behind the anti–Jewish riots.’22
Zionism had indeed made progress among the Jews of Libya, helped by the wartime presence of soldiers from the Palestine–recruited Jewish Brigade. The imminent prospect of a National Home had given the Jews a sense of pride and a hope for a secure future. Jews would no longer have to put up with being second–class citizens, but that was how the Muslims among whom they lived considered them: the eternal, born dhimmis, subject to one form or other of the Covenant of Omar.
The British report was also correct in noting that Zionism had been a cause of the riots. Two of the premises damaged in the Tripoli riots were the head office of the Maccabi Club and the clubhouse at the Maccabi sports field, whose football, basketball, tennis and swimming facilities were a centre of the sporting activity of Zionist youth. Also damaged was the Zionist youth training farm outside Tripoli.23 On November 4 news had been published in the local Tripoli newspaper, Tarabulus el Gharb, of anti–Jewish and anti–Zionist demonstrations in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt; this served to fan the flames of the existing anti–Jewish feeling.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second Word War, the Jews in Palestine were determined to bring an end to British rule. At the same time, the independent Muslim States of Egypt and Iraq put pressure on their own Jewish populations to denounce Zionism, and to renounce all solidarity with Jews in British Mandate Palestine.
The Jews in Palestine were facing local Arab attacks on an increasingly bloody scale. But despite the growing violence, Jews from Muslim lands, in common with Jewish survivors from the Holocaust in Europe, made enormous efforts to reach Palestine. There were risks and obstacles in every attempt. On 8 October 1945 the Palestinian Jewish newspaper Davar published a report on fifty Iraqi Jews who hadjust crossed the border from Lebanon without permits. At seven in the morning, ‘two British officers from the Transjordan Frontier Force saw a group of about fifty Jews near Kfar Giladi. When they were about to investigate the matter, they were pushed aside by members of the Kibbutz who had absorbed the group into their settlement.’ Undeterred, the British surrounded the kibbutz. At three in the afternoon there was shooting, and eight kibbutzniks were wounded. The British withdrew and the Iraqi Jews were safe.24
In Aden, as a result of radio broadcasts and the prevalence of loudspeakers in cafés, the illiterate among the Arab population had, in the words of an official British Government report, ‘begun to take an interest in outside affairs … and in particular events connected with Palestine.’ News was reported ‘of Arab lorries being driven at Jews walking in the desert.’ In one such incident, a Jew was killed.25
In March 1946 the head of the Jewish Agency, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, was questioned by the Anglo–American Committee of Enquiry ‘regarding the problems of European Jewry and Palestine.’ In the course of his presentation, Weizmann spoke of the Jews under Muslim rule, telling the committee: ‘There are pogroms in Baghdad, Tripoli and even Cairo.’ He acknowledged that previously ‘the Muslim world has treated the Jews with great tolerance,’ but he added that the Jews ‘must not close our eyes to the fact that this greater humanitarian tradition is under pressure of a new nationalism.’26
1 Letters of 20 December 1942 (to the American authorities) and 19 February 1943 (to the British authorities): National Archives (Kew), Foreign Office papers, FO 443/43.
2 Philip Jordan, Jordan’s Tunis Diary, page 208.
3 Military Archives (Freiburg), RH–26–90, Afrika Division, File N. 61: quoted in Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous, page 218, note 52.
4 Michel Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa During the Second World War, pages 145–6.
5 Letter of Colette Aboulker (José Aboulker’s sister), submitted to the British Foreign Office, 16 January 1943: Foreign Office papers, FO 371/36244.
6 Philip H. Bagby, American Vice Consul, Report of 27 April 1943, ‘Persecution of Jews at Beni Mellal’: United States National Archives, Record Group 84/Entry 2998/Box 1.
7 Letter of 26 October 1943: Foreign Office papers, FO 443/43.
8 Maurice M. Roumani, The Jews of Libya, pages 43–4.
9 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, page 364, notes 11 and 12.
10 ‘Note on the Jews in Afghanistan,’ letter from G.F. Squire to Anthony Eden, 29 December 1944: Foreign Office papers, FO 371/45207.
11 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, page 365, note 16.
12 Telegrams of 2 and 3 November 1945: Foreign Office papers, FO 371/45394.
13 Salvator Cicurel’s niece was married to Pierre Mendès–France, a future Prime Minister of France.
14 Clifton Daniel, ‘Tripoli Riots are Laid to Poverty; Looting Stirred Many Arab Attacks, At Height of Attacks on Jews, Some Slayings were Result of Lust for Blood, British Seek Sources of False Rumors,’ New York Times, 14 November 1945.
15 Clifton Daniel, ‘74 Tripolitanian Jews Slain in Arab Riots,’ New York Times, 8 November 1945.
16 Clifton Daniel, ‘Tripoli Riots are Laid to Poverty; Looting Stirred Many Arab Attacks, At Height of Attacks on Jews, Some Slayings Were Result of Lust for Blood, British Seek Sources of False Rumors,’ New York Times, 14 November 1945.
17 ‘Anti–Jewish Riots in Tripolitania,’ Central Zionist Archives, S/25/6457.
18 ‘Anti–Jewish Riots in Tripolitania,’ Central Zionist Archives, S/25/6457.
19 Maurice M. Roumani, The Jews of Libya, page 49.
20 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, page 369, note 26.
21 Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970, pages 192–206.
22 British Military Administration, Tripolitania, Annual Report, 1945, pages 11 and 13.
23 It later emerged that on the morning of November 4, the British security officer for Tripolitania had been warned that an anti–Jewish demonstration supporting the rights of Palestinian Arabs was being planned. ‘The Arab Anti–Jewish Riots in Tripolitania, 4–7 November, 1945,’ Central Zionist Archives, S/25/10.165.
24 Mordechai Ben–Porat, To Baghdad and Back, page 39.
25 Report on the Commission of Enquiry into the Disturbances in Aden in December, 1947, paragraphs 30 and 32.
26 Evidence taken by the ‘Anglo–American Committee of Enquiry regarding the problems of European Jewry and Palestine,’ Weizmann Archive.