About the Film
The Forgotten Refugees explores the history and destruction of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, some of which had existed for over 2,500 years. Employing extensive testimony of survivors from Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, the film recounts the stories of joy and of suffering that nearly a million individuals have carried with them for so long.
Segments on the contributions of Middle Eastern Jews to politics, business and music, testify to the enormously rich cultures which fleeing Jews left behind. The film weaves personal stories with dramatic archival footage of rescue missions, historic images of exodus and resettlement, and analysis by contemporary scholars, to tell the story of how and why the Arab worlds Jewish population declined from one million in 1945 to several thousand today.
The Producers
The David Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote a fair and honest understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
IsraTV is a production house based in Tel Aviv, Israel which produces documentary films for international audiences.
Other Languages
Other languages: The Forgotten Refugees is currently available in English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, German, Arabic and Russian (dubbed). If you are interested in a translated copy please contact Nathalie Alyon at na(at)davidproject.org
Featured Personalities from the Film
Gina Waldman Libya
Born in Libya in 1948, Bublil and her family were forced to flee their home country in 1967 with only the clothes on their back and $20. The persecution and hatred she experienced as a Jew in the Middle East nearly became deadly. As her family fled on a bus to the airport, the driver attempted to set the bus aflame and murder all the passengers. After settling in America, Bublil became a leading activist in the Soviet Jewry movement and worked with Muslim refugees from Bosnia, for which she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award. She is a co-founder of JIMENA.
Joseph Abdel Wahed Egypt
Joe was born in 1936 in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo. He is one of the nearly 80,000 Jews who grew up in Egypt, were schooled there, and have fond memories of their close family and community life. That is, until riots, lootings, killings and unjust accusations became commonplace resulting in the forced expulsion of all Jews between 1950 and 1970. He left Egypt and took refuge in France in 1952, continued his education in London, Scotland and at the Sorbonne. Then he came to San Francisco and through his efforts became the Senior Economist at Wells Fargo Bank. He is a co-founder of JIMENA, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.
Loolwa Khazzoom Iraqi-American
Loolwa Khazzoom pioneered the Jewish Multiculturalism movement in 1990, through ground-breaking work with Jewish conferences, synagogues, schools, publications, and community organizations throughout North America and Israel. Her work radically transformed thinking about diversity and Jewish identity -- inspiring the proliferation of media articles, educational materials, and community programs on Jewish multiculturalism. As part of this work, Khazzoom created a progressive lens for examining the issue of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa -- a lens now commonly used in discourse on the Arab-Israel conflict. Khazzoom is the editor of The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage -- the first anthology by and about Jewish women of color, and she has published articles about Middle Eastern Jewish identity in periodicals including The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Marie Claire. She co-founded JIMENA and is currently president of Tapestry, a Jewish multicultural consulting company.
Yair Dalal Iraqi-Israeli
Composer, violinist and oud player, Yair Dalal is probably the most prolific Israeli ethnic musician today. Over the last decade he has put out nine albums, covering wide and varied cultural territory. Much of Dalal's output reflects the strong affinity he has for the desert and its inhabitants. Dalal's family came to Israel from Baghdad and he has included much Iraqi material in his work to date. Whether working on his own, or with his Alol ensemble, Dalal creates new Middle Eastern music by interweaving the traditions of Iraqi and Jewish Arabic music with a range of influences originating from such diverse cultural milieus as the Balkans to India.
Moshe Katsav Iran
Former mayor of Kiryat Malachi, Member of Knesset and minister representing the Likud party, and the eighth president of the State of Israel. Katsav was born in 1945 in Yazd, Iran, and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1951. Katsav is the second president of Sephardic origin, and the first president to have been born in an Islamic country.
Public Television Stations
KQED-TV | San Francisco, CA | Dec. 13-18, 2005
WHRO-TV | Norfolk, VA | May 3 & 7, 2006
Thanks for posting this, G-Man. I sent the link to a Canadian friend who is of Moroccan Jewish descent. The perspective of a Middleastern or "Arab Jew" is very interesting to me personally as well.
Thanks for posting this, G-Man. I sent the link to a Canadian friend who is of Moroccan Jewish descent. The perspective of a Middleastern or "Arab Jew" is very interesting to me personally as well.
Thought you would find this of interest. Unfortunately, discussion of Jews, whether you love them or hate them, is often Eurocentric. People forget that Jews like these really do exist, and in their own way, as the documentary points out, they suffered mistreatment as well.
Personally, I was surprised this was shown on PBS. Some of the things discussed were of a very politically incorrect nature.
Its interesting when Ashkenazi Jews came to the U.S. during the early 19th century they eventually separated Jewish ethnic identity from the Jewish religious identity. In Europe it seems that to be truly Jewish you not only had to have a Jewish mother (matrilineal descent) but also to be practicing Judaism. In Europe it seems Jewishness was both a religious and ethnic identity rolled into one. However, to avoid overt discrimination in the U.S. many Jewish immigrants basically claimed Jewishness and or Judaism as a religion as opposed to an ethnic identity as well.
In New York and Israel the more extremely Orthodox Jews have specific criteria for claiming and maintaining Jewish identity.
Ask a secular Jew-one who only shows up for high Holy Days or who remembers going to the Catskills to Jewish summer camps, and they'll probably tell you about the food, some customs, and singing Yiddish songs, the Yiddish theater as being part of Jewish identity.
However, speaking Yiddish is a part of Ashkenazi Jewish identity, its not related to Mizrahi Jewish identity. In the U.S. there is the perception of Ashkenazi as being the only face of Jewishness. It is also "white".
A family friend who is originally from Baghdad but left in the 1950s as a young man was born into a Jewish family. He is Roman Catholic now.
He has the same complexion as Ghandi, very Middle Eastern in looks.
I regard him ethnically as both Jewish and Iraqi and religiously as R.Catholic.
Another thought I have is that the Hebrews/Habirus 2 or 3,000 years ago were basically just one of many middle eastern tribes/ethnic groups coexisting in the Middle East, that is until according to the Bible God spoke to Abraham and made him and his descendants the Chosen People of Yaweh.
Are they a Middle Eastern ethnic group who due to adaptational patterns of survival rose to prominence in comparison to other ethnic in that region?
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