One million Jews fled Arab countries. Their stories remain untold

Levana Zamir was 10 years old when her idyllic life in Cairo, Egypt, suddenly turned into a nightmare.

Growing up in an aristocratic merchant family, Zamir remembers a joyful childhood by the shores of the country’s iconic Nile River.

“We lived at the spot where the Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea. I remember the soft breeze, and silky sand, and the large villas built there,” Zamir recalled.

“But then, in May 1948, after the announcement of Israel’s establishment, our life changed,” she recounted.

“At midnight, ten Egyptian officers raided our house. They knocked hard on the door, almost broke it, and searched everywhere. They tore mattresses, looked through every cupboard. They didn’t find anything, and so they took my uncle to prison, accusing him of being a Zionist.”

Zamir recalled asking her mother, “Is he a criminal? Did he do anything wrong?” Her mother replied that he was arrested only because he was a Jew.

“Overnight, being a Zionist became a crime,” Zamir said, adding, “I immediately thought, ‘Soon they will come and take me, too.’ I was terrified.”

Seeing her uncle imprisoned for more than a year and a half without trial, and watching her father, who ran one of the most important printing houses in Egypt, lose his business after authorities expropriated it, left a deep scar on Zamir.

Ultimately, the family had no choice but to abandon their comfortable life and flee the country.

Many decades have passed since Zamir and her family, along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews, were forced out of their homes in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, and elsewhere across the Arab world. Yet memories of persecution and fear remain. For many, the pain of leaving has never faded.

For Zamir, the escape from Cairo was dramatic.

Zamir’s parents insisted on secrecy, and one day she suddenly saw relatives standing with packed suitcases, ready to depart. Arriving in a refugee camp in France, she said they “lived in one narrow shelter with three other families.”

“I would walk the dusty paths [of the camp] crying and saying to myself, ‘I wish I were dead,’” she said, recalling how the family felt utterly lost and how she later learned that her traumatized father had even attempted to end his life.

“My mother was strong; she saved us all,” Zamir said, noting that conditions for Jews in Egypt worsened throughout the 1950s, as many were stripped of citizenship, dismissed from jobs, and saw their property confiscated.

Most, like Zamir’s family, resettled in Israel, while others immigrated to Western countries such as Britain, France, the United States, and Canada.

Edwin Shuker, 70, an Iraqi-Jewish businessman who divides his time between Britain and Dubai, also attended the event at the National Library. He described his childhood in Baghdad as “paradise.”

“There was harmony between Jews, Sunnis, and Shiites,” recounted Shuker, who said the first eight years of his life were harmonious, and the second eight years “were like hell.” He left Iraq at the age of 16.

“After 1967, the authorities cut off our telephones so we couldn’t be in contact with anybody, and we weren’t allowed to go farther than five kilometers (from home),” he said, adding that violence, abuse, torture, and arrests of Jews became widespread.

This repression peaked on January 27, 1969, when 14 Iraqis – nine of them Jews – were hanged in Baghdad’s central square, accused of spying for Israel.

After that event, Shuker’s family decided to flee, posing as Muslims and using falsified passports.

“We took nothing with us and escaped through the mountains of Kurdistan,” he described.

“It became clear that there was no future for us anymore in Iraq,” said Linda Menuhin, who left Baghdad at 20 years old with her brother, against their father’s wishes.

“He urged us to wait for passports, but I decided to go,” said the 75-year-old, adding that it was the last time she ever saw him. Her father, a lawyer who supported the Jewish community, disappeared in 1972.

For years, Menuhin – now well known for her public advocacy for Iraqi Jews in Israel – searched for clues about his fate. All evidence suggested he was abducted and killed.

Jews in Lebanon also faced violence, though it stemmed less from the state and more from local militias, particularly the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“After the Sabra and Shatila events, people began pointing at us in the streets shouting ‘Jews, Jews.’ Antisemitic graffiti spread on school walls, and harassment became more severe,” he said, referring to the mass attacks in two Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut in 1982.

As Hezbollah expanded its control over Beirut, kidnappings of foreign nationals and Jews intensified.

“They abducted 11 Jews in a single day, among them was my father. All of them were murdered,” said Cohen, who today resides in Israel. “None were released. Unlike today, there were no negotiations or deals conducted with terrorists at that time.

“Hezbollah had managed to diminish the Jewish presence by 1985, something the Lebanese government could not prevent,” he continued. “They simply weren’t able to protect anyone in the country, not just Jews, because Hezbollah had become the strongest force.”

While not all Jews from Arab lands left under duress, Prof. Henry Green, a leading partner in the Sephardi Voices project documenting the stories of Jews displaced from Arab countries, said the time has come for global recognition of their trauma – and their rights.

As part of this effort, he has petitioned US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to raise the issue as the White House works to expand the Abraham Accords.

“At this stage, the focus is not on economic compensation, even though they left everything behind,” Green told The Jerusalem Report.

Instead, he said, it is about the narrative – “honoring their stories and making sure they are taught in the education system.”

“Their expulsion has been ignored. Their suffering must be told, and not only that of Jews from Western Europe,” Green said.

Shuker agreed, stressing that this chapter of Jewish history must be properly documented for future generations.

“It shouldn’t be sidelined in school textbooks merely as a footnote,” he said. “Unless these stories are introduced into the curriculum, people will never know the truth about what happened.”

Despite the trauma, pain, and loss, Shuker, Zamir, and Cohen all spoke of their former homelands with visible affection.

Shuker even returned to Baghdad 20 years ago, becoming the first Iraqi Jew to visit the city since fleeing.

He later purchased a home there.

“I want the Iraqis to know that my story hasn’t ended. The mission isn’t complete,” he said. “We will return [for a visit].”■