My column in today’s Iowa City Press Citizen:

The forgotten refugees …

from Arab lands and their descendants in Iowa City

James Eaves-Johnson
Writers’ Group

The Jewish community in Iowa City is small but unusually diverse. Its synagogue is one of a few affiliated with both the Reform and the Conservative movements in Judaism. While the synagogue in town is traditionally Ashkenazi (Jews more recently from Eastern Europe), a sizeable and active component of the community is Sephardi or Mizrahi (Jews more recently from the Mediterranean and farther east).

Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, have important and unheard stories to tell. The lack of familiarity with these stories is unfortunate because these Jews have a history that, while less lethal than the history of Ashkenazim during the Holocaust in Europe, is nearly as tragic.

In the past 100 years, Jews in these lands have declined from more than 1 million to near zero.

The Ottoman Empire

Margot Lurie is a Mizrahi Jew. She lives in Iowa City today, attracted here by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Like many Americans, her background is diverse, but much of her family is from the Middle East. Her grandfather, Elias Levi, was among the first Jews to flee Arab lands in modern times. He was born to a family of Baghdadi Jews that very well may have lived in Mesopotamia for millennia.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the Middle East was changing rapidly. The Turkic Ottoman Empire, which had dominated North Africa, southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia was losing its power and would soon be reduced to Turkey. In World War I, Jews had been a fairly well protected, if subservient, minority in the Ottoman Empire. However, the weakening of the Ottomans degraded this protection.

It was in 1913, when Lurie’s grandfather was a toddler, that her family fled Baghdad. Her great-grandfather was a reserve officer in the Ottoman army and had heard of an anti-Semitic plot against the Jews of Baghdad. Her family fled to the places where they could — Calcutta, India and to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). Her grandfather spent the bulk of his younger years growing up in Burma. While he was in high school, he founded the Rangoon Zionist Society and began writing for various Jewish publications in the Far East. Just prior to World War II, he traveled to the U.S. for religious study. The Japanese invasion of Burma kept him here permanently.

While today we consider Myanmar’s ruling junta to be one of the more repressive regimes on the planet, it was a haven for many Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Arab lands. By fleeing then, Lurie’s family escaped one of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in modern history.

Although Baghdad was arguably the most Jewish metropolitan area in the world, it would succumb to a pro-Nazi uprising in 1941. The pogrom following that uprising, the Farhud, would kill more Jews than were killed by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Morocco’s Jewish population

Coralville resident Moshe Peri was born in Israel to Moroccan parents. He works at Rockwell Collins and moved here to join his wife, who is getting her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. Until coming to the U.S., Peri’s background was typical of Moroccan Jews.

Morocco, to its credit, is probably the Arab country that has demonstrated the greatest tolerance of the Jews. During World War II, Sultan Mohammed V tried to limit the impact of the Vichy race laws against the Jews. As a result, they fared better than Jews in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. But in all these countries, thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. Some were even deported to Auschwitz. Moreover, the end of the war won Moroccan Jews no reprieve. In 1948, the Jews of Morocco faced anti-Jewish riots and boycotts.

Moshe observes that Moroccan Jews “all shared the same dream to immigrate to Israel.” And so, once Jews could flee to Israel, they did. In 1948, large numbers of Jews began leaving Morocco for Israel. Today, Morocco’s Jewish population stands at less than a tenth of its peak size. Most of those who left have found refuge in Israel.

Dealing with anti-Semitism

As a practical matter, it was Zionism that finally provided refuge to Jews in the Middle East. Jewish populations were consistently treated as foreign and subordinate to the domestic population wherever they went. They had to constantly appeal to the power of local rulers and seek foreign diplomatic protection. Indeed, many Jews of these areas carried European passports and generally identified as members of those European nations more than as members of the Arab countries where they resided.

Unlike Lurie’s family, the Baghdadi Jews who remained through the end of the Ottoman Empire faced this problem acutely as their Ottoman protectors were displaced by the British. In 1918, Baghdadi Jews recognized the precariousness of their situation. The Chief Rabbi expressed to the British that local authorities would be unable or unwilling to protect minority populations and that such conditions contradicted the democratic values of the Allied forces. To remedy this, the Chief Rabbi requested that Baghdadi Jews be given all the rights and duties of British citizenship. Britain would go on to offer limited protection to the Jews but would never meet this request.

Interestingly, Lurie’s grandmother had a parallel experience. She had left German Breslau late in the interwar period to escape rising anti-Semitism there. She arrived in the British Mandate of Palestine to help with the Jewish movement of national liberation — Zionism. While some Jews did fight the British colonial presence there, most knew it would be short-lived and preferred to work with the British while simultaneously pursuing their Zionist goals of statehood.

It was under these circumstances that Lurie’s grandmother joined a women’s auxiliary of the British Royal Air Force and served in Egypt, identifying Nazi planes for the Allies during World War II. Unfortunately, her opportunities were somewhat limited in the RAF. As Lurie notes, “it was tacitly understood that Jews weren’t permitted to occupy important positions.” (Lurie recently published an article on her grandfather’s experiences in “The Boy from Rangoon” in Tablet Magazine at www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/19238.)

Jews in Arab lands

Peri’s family had little opportunity for such resistance to the Nazi presence in World War II. Indeed, Jews in Arab lands were generally prohibited from possessing arms for self defense, let alone being allowed to fight in the war. They did, however, have the good fortune of living in Agadir, in southern Morocco. The long reach of the Holocaust would be cut short from reaching his family by the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942.

The flight of Moshe’s family to Israel would enable him to live a life previously unavailable his family. Before moving to Coralville, Moshe would go on to serve in Shayetet 13 (Israel’s version of the Navy Seals), get an engineering degree and lead the R&D department for an Israeli wireless telecom company. In just one generation, his family would go from being subjugated Moroccan Jews to proud and strong Israeli Jews.

Lurie and Peri have the tremendous benefit of a real transformation away from the experience of their ancestors. Both are proud and outspoken Jews who do not fear standing up for their people. Not all Jews from Arab lands are so lucky.

See original: http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20091206/OPINION01/912060306/1018/OPINION/The-forgotten-refugees-…

So this post is from my iPhone. The WordPress app seems pretty good.

My column in today’s Iowa City Press-Citizen:

City needs narrower option
James Eaves-Johnson
Writers’ Group
SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

The police officer pulled up to the curb and asked, “What are you kids up to?”

Most of my friends had made a bee-line to the nearest apartment building. Sure, it was three o’clock in the morning, and none of us was older than 15, but we were just a bunch of restless nerds.

This was the first time I had been to Coralville. A bunch of friends I had met at nerd camp (what else do you call taking advanced classes at a university over the summer?) decided that we should get together. The majority lived near Iowa City, so a friend and I had bugged our parents until they caved and agreed to shuttle us from Des Moines for a weekend.

“We were just bored and decided to take a walk,” I told the officer, slightly annoyed that my friends thought we had a reason to run.

“You know I could take you to the police station and have your parents pick you up, don’t you?”

Apparently, Coralville had a curfew at the time. I had no idea. I was incredulous.

“Well, I am from Urbandale and he’s from West Des Moines,” I said, pointing to my friend who had traveled with me. “I am not even sure that they would pick up the phone, and it is a two-hour drive from here.”

Of course, if he had wanted to detain us at the police station, he would need to call for backup to make room for us all. The police at the station would need to deal with babysitting us for, probably, several hours. Corralling this nerd herd was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

“OK, well go back to the home where you are staying and don’t let me catch you out again tonight.”

The nerd herd complied.

The police officer had little interest in enforcing the curfew law. Arguably, such a law does not exist to be enforced, but exists merely as a pretext for investigation into other criminal acts. Indeed, if such a law were rigorously enforced, it would unnecessarily consume the time of the police and justice system.

And this pretext is precisely why Iowa City is considering a juvenile curfew law. One area of town has had a recent problem with juvenile hooliganism. There is not a general problem with nocturnal youths. There is a problem with a relatively small group of youths in a single neighborhood. The problem is likely a temporary one.

This law may solve the immediate problem. But it will undoubtedly reach further than intended. Will the Iowa City Council be quick to repeal the law when general lawfulness is restored? It seems doubtful. The law will likely remain on the books until it is finally enforced against a few “good” kids, whose parents raise hell until the law is repealed. Until then, the law will undoubtedly invite profiling of suspects and haphazard harassment of juveniles and younger-looking college students. It will result in unequal application of the law and greater suspicion of police motives.

If the council wants to attack a narrow problem, it should create a narrow solution. To start, it could change the proposed curfew by setting a date for it to sunset.

A better solution might be to delegate limited authority to the mayor and chief of police to declare a temporary neighborhood-specific curfew based on a finding of fact that it was experiencing an acute crime problem. Such a declaration could become effective only upon notification of the council at its next meeting, at which time the council could intervene and nullify the declaration if necessary. Unless the declaration was renewed, it could expire automatically in three months or earlier by revocation.

The council should find a narrower solution. It cannot intend for the currently proposed law to be broadly enforced. One would hope that it does not intend that the law be enforced erratically.

[This is my column in today's Iowa City Press-Citizen.  It can also be found at http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20090726/OPINION01/907260303/1019]

The situation in Iran in recent weeks has offered both much hope and much fear. Indeed, Iran seems to be on the brink of something not unlike the pivotal events of 1979. Those events triumphantly ended the monarchy in Iran … only to usher in a fascist theocracy.

Fortunately, two books have been released this year that illustrate both the hope and the fear. Both books are by accomplished journalists who have deep roots in Iran and mastery of the Persian language.

‘Honeymoon in Tehran’

Azadeh Moaveni’s “Honeymoon in Tehran” describes her experiences as a journalist in Tehran as she falls in love, marries and has a child with an Iranian man. Because her life is intertwined with the liberal modern culture that dominates northern Tehran, her story breathes rich life into the people we have seen in the news standing up so defiantly to the fascist regime that controls their country.

Moaveni shows that many people in Iran, across a variety of social categories, are not mere “moderates,” as that term is so euphemistically used to describe people in repressive countries who have merely suppressed the urge to murder. The people of Iran are largely liberals of the type we identify with in this country. They do not merely tolerate diversity and treat others politely; they embrace diversity and seek out cultural experiences beyond what the regime allows.

In spite of this hope, Moaveni also describes the creeping fascism that penetrates more severely after the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After a time of living in constant fear of arrest, she is compelled to leave Iran so that she can raise her child out from under the thumb of the fascist regime.

‘The Persian Night’

Amir Taheri’s “The Persian Night” more starkly shows the darkness and fear cast by the regime. He goes into great detail describing the repressive organs of the regime. He describes the morality patrols — known in Persian as Gasht-e Ershad — that oppress women who dress too colorfully, allow their hair to show, or converse with men.

Taheri tells about various horrors visited upon Iranians by the Baseej militia and the Revolutionary Guard. He examines how the regime exports its fascist ideology through the various arms of Hizballah that operate worldwide.

Most importantly, Taheri describes the regime’s insane pursuit of nuclear weapons and its lack of concern for the welfare of the Iranian people.

Perhaps the most troubling parts of both books are those that display the disregard the regime has for human life. From AhmadinNejad to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, the regime’s leaders have expressed the sincere belief that the noblest act one can do for the regime is to die. These men justify the most evil acts with a messianic belief of divine rescue. During Iran’s war with Iraq, the regime most vividly displayed its ideology of death when it sent many thousands of young children to die, running across minefields.

When a fascist regime like this instigates foreign wars and pursues nuclear weapons, it poses a threat unlike any the world has faced. The Soviet Union and the United States were saved from nuclear annihilation because each side loved their children and wanted to see them live. What is the world to do when those controlling the nukes want to see their children die?

As we are forced to deal with this question more imminently in the coming months, Moaveni and Taheri explain that the world must make every effort to show solidarity with the people of Iran.

A small example of how America does this is the president’s Nowruz message to the Persian people. Nowruz is the celebration of Persian New Year that pre-dates the arrival of Islam in Iran. Even as the Iranian people have embraced Islam, Nowruz has remained a major holiday celebrated widely by the Iranian people. Because of its narrow theocratic ideology, the regime has tried to suppress Nowruz and has only failed because of the popular observance of it. When the U.S. president addresses the Iranian people on Nowruz, he sends a strong message that we stand with them against their oppressors.

As the Iranian people pursue regime change through boycotts, strikes, and other disturbances, we must continue to stand with them. Their actions provide an opportunity for us to pressure the regime through targeted policies and diplomacy that can reinforce the Iranian people’s efforts. With an intelligent strategy, we might provide the needed momentum to help the Iranian people change the fascist regime that oppresses them and threatens the world.

Anyone who has been through Israeli airport security knows that American screening is a joke.  My first time back, I was detained for a few hours because I was carrying some of my wife’s research materials in my luggage – and none of that time was spent just sitting around.  Israelis rely on multiple identity verifications, multiple human-to-human interactions, extensive bag searches, and almost universal chemical swab testing of baggage.  Each time I went through, the process had minor differences, but it was always thorough.  If you fly Israel’s El Al airline, the security is tighter still.

There is no privacy in flying from Israel, but the intrusion seems balanced by a genuine concern and effort to ensure security.

I have even had experiences with Chilean airport security that were better balanced than my American experiences.  Once when going through security there, a screener pulled me aside and simply said, “show me the knife.”  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and so I completely dumped out my carry on.  At the bottom of one of the pockets was a nail clipper with a small folding knife.  It was what he was looking for, but once he saw it was not dangerous, the screener gave it back to me and sent me on my way.

Nowhere more than this country have I felt that airport security is tailored for maximum intrusion and minimum security.  If you want to read some really great examples of this disturbing truth, read Jeffrey Goldberg’s ‘The Things He Carried’ in The Atlantic.

Fortunately, the courts seem to be rolling back the incentives for unnecessarily intrusive searches.  This example, among others, was in today’s Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers for weapons and explosives; beyond that, the agency is overstepping its bounds, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley said.

via Airport Screening – Are TSA Searches Going Too Far? – WSJ.com.

Of course, this only helps at the point where a court gets involved.  If a search is merely inconvenient and intrusive, but leads to no criminal charge, it is hard to see what remedy is available.  Sue for nominal damages?  Maybe a class action for lost airfare due to delays that cause missed flights?  We can hope …

Sri Lanka provides a solid example of how to most effectively deal with terrorists.  After decades of facing some of the most brutal terror tactics, Sri Lanka adopted tactics sufficient to quell the terrorists.  Robert Kaplan at The Atlantic gives us the lessons:

Lesson 1:

The insurgents are using human shields? No problem. Just keep killing the innocent bystanders until you get to the fighters themselves.

Lesson 2:

Bad media coverage is hurting morale and giving succor to the enemy? Just kill the journalists.

Lesson 3:

The international community disapproves of your methods and cuts off military aid because of the human rights violations you’ve committed? Again, no problem. Get aid from China.

The international system created largely by western nations has produced these lessons.  While democrats and liberty-minded people would rightly feel shame at learning these lessons, most nations have no problem adopting such Machiavellian approaches.  Indeed, failing to adopt such amoral policies attracts terror and other vicious methods for obtaining political goals.  We need to rethink the system that  encourages terrorism and offers only such fascist responses as effective tools to combat it.

Read more: The Atlantic Online | July 2009 Unbound | To Catch a Tiger | Robert D. Kaplan.

I have no doubt that Israel will not permit Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb.  Israelis across the political spectrum perceive an Iranian nuke as an intolerable existential threat and are willing to tolerate almost anything (particularly any diplomatic consequences or military consequences from Iran’s  proxies) more than such a threat.

What has interested me most is whether other nations, specifically Saudi Arabia, the United States, or France might preempt the need for such an attack by carrying out an attack of their own.  After all, Iran attempted to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in Osirak before Israel finished the job.

And, today, we get pretty solid news of  at least some coordination between Israel and Saudi Arabia from The Times:

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Via Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran – Times Online .

It is still my hope that such eventualities do not come to pass.  Iran has every right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to peaceful nuclear energy.  But, it must submit to safeguards to prevent nuclear weapons development.  Those safe guards are not in place, the IAEA has been kicked out of Iran, and the nuclear fuel enrichment in Iran goes well beyond peaceful uses.

We need the Green Revolution to restore sanity to the government of Iran and constrain the nuclear pursuit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  If they do not succeed, I have little hope that Supreme Leader Khamenehi and the insane Mahdi-obsessed public face of the regime, Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad, will submit to a peaceful resolution.

Argentina is among the better places for Jews living in South America.  While my Jewish friends in Venezuela were prepared to flee on a moments notice and making long term plans to live in other countries, my Jewish friends in Argentina were mostly worrying about vandalism and lower level hate crime.

That said, Argentina was the site of one of the severest terror attacks on Jews in  South America.  In 1994, an Iran-backed Hezbollah attack on the AMIA (Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid) building murdered 85 and injured 300.

Now, one of  the police who so bungled the case that he might have made himself an accessory after the fact (or worse) is getting the top police job in Buenos Aires:

Buenos Aires city mayor Mauricio Macri has appointed Jorge Palacios, a disgraced  former Argentine Federal Police officer suspected of involvement in the cover up of the AMIA massacre, to be the head of the city’s first autonomous police force. Such is the strength of the suspicions attaching to Palacios’s role in the aftermath of the AMIA attack that State Prosecutor Albert Nisman is believed to be on the point of indicting him on charges of having warned a suspect , Kanoore Edul,  that he was  under investigation and that his home was about to be raided by the police.

via AMIA Suspect Gets Top Cop Job at Z-Word Blog.

Such is the situation of Jews in many places in the world.  Even when Jews are relatively well off, they face dangers considered unacceptable to most other peoples.  This is one of the reasons why Israel is so important.  When other states refuse to protect Jews, whether out of malice or negligence, Israel is there to protect and receive them as needed.

It is good to remember that much of the world is severely unfree.  Foreign Policy has a good feature on a few of the least free places on earth.  Many Americans, I suspect, could not locate many of these places on the map.  It is too bad because some of them are within the US orbit of influence.  Americans should want our country to be a beacon of light into the dark places of the world.  But, in order to be that beacon, we must know where the darkness reigns.

One disputed territory that shockingly few people know about is Western Sahara, which is under Moroccan occupation:

Western Sahara is the subject of a decades-long dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed rebel group, the Polisario Front. Morocco controls local elections, severely restricts freedom of assembly, and denies nomadic Saharans, or Sahrawis, their right to form independent political or nongovernmental organizations. Sahrawi activists face harassment, arbitrary detention, and torture. Moroccan authorities regularly use force when quelling demonstrations and riots in Sahrawi villages.

via The Least Free Places on Earth | Foreign Policy.

The source data is available from Freedom House at this link.

I am always quick to note that a major reason why overhead costs at Medicare are low is that Medicare is better at foisting those costs on health care providers and other health care players who pass them on in the form of higher bills.  Of course, my complaint really only applies to legitimate healthcare providers.  From the Wall Street Journal, here is an exception to my argument that still shows they are  a sham:

One of the purported benefits of nationalized health care is that it will be more efficient than private insurers since it would lack the profit motive and have lower administrative expenses, like Medicare. But one reason entitlement programs are so easy to defraud is precisely because they don’t have those overhead costs — they automatically pay whatever bills roll in with valid claims numbers.

via Why It’s Easy to Steal From Medicare – WSJ.com.