Recognizing the Âkira: Justice for the Forgotten Jews of the Arab World
- Caroline Haïat
- Jun 27
- 7 min read
"It happened insidiously, gradually. The Jews began to feel rejected and were forced to leave Tunisia," recalls Dinah Landier, who was born in Tunis. The forced departure of Jews from Arab countries lies at the heart of the mission of the Observatory of Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran, founded in Paris by David Dahan. At first, it was merely a WhatsApp group, but little by little, it evolved into a real organization, with the goal of obtaining political and legal recognition for the tragedy of the Âkira: the forced uprooting of nearly one million Jews from Arab countries and Iran between 1945 and 1988. The Observatory also fights to have this historical event included in school curricula, alongside other episodes of ethnic cleansing or discrimination against minorities in the Muslim world (such as Christians, Yazidis, Zoroastrians…). Recognition of the Âkira and its inclusion in education would also serve to combat antisemitism, by challenging the binary vision in which the West is always guilty and the Muslim world invariably the victim.
“On the political level, we advocate for the Âkira to be recognized by both national and international bodies. On the legal level, we are pursuing proceedings in various courts because we believe that an act of ethnic cleansing occurred in several Arab countries. There are facts, laws, and administrative decisions that were made which implicate the responsibility of States, and in some cases, individual perpetrators if they are still alive,” explains David Dahan in an interview with Itonnews.
Dahan also emphasizes that the Observatory "communicates extensively about Jewish memory, history, and culture."
“We do all this work mainly for non-Jews, because they are much less familiar with Sephardic and Mizrahi history. It's understandable — after the war, the Jewish world was predominantly Ashkenazi. But the Sephardic community carries 2,500 years of history that vanished in just a few decades,” he laments.
Committed Missions
The Observatory recently launched a campaign targeting members of the French National Assembly, urging them to adopt a resolution that recognizes the Âkira and incorporates it into school textbooks.
“There’s an intellectual barrier in French academic circles. For many intellectuals, this is remembered as a mostly happy nostalgia, seen through a totally binary lens: on one side, the colonialist, imperialist Western world, and on the other, the colonized, victimized Arab-Muslim world. Former minister Christiane Taubira, for example, explicitly told L’Express in 2006 that the Arab-Muslim slave trade should not be discussed when teaching about the enslavement of Black Africans. She argued it would unfairly burden young Arabs with guilt. But they’re first and foremost French — and her remarks were themselves racist. And to use her own logic, we never asked young non-Arab French people whether we were allowed to talk about slavery or the Shoah that happened in Europe,” says Dahan.
The Observatory’s advocacy efforts are aimed particularly at policymakers in France, but also internationally, thanks to strong communication on social media and direct engagement with political figures. They have also established a panel of experts that will enable them to pursue either a comprehensive legal approach or a case-by-case strategy.
“We can take a broad approach regarding the situation of Jews in several Arab countries during the 20th century. In Iraq, between 1950 and 1951, the state passed two laws that explicitly dispossessed the Jewish population. These unambiguous texts make it relatively easy to establish the direct responsibility of the Iraqi state. This kind of repressive mechanism fits into a broader pattern, where minorities — and Jews in particular — often served as scapegoats. They were, in a way, the punching bag of regimes, often authoritarian, that sought to channel public hatred toward a designated target,” says David Dahan.
But this phenomenon was not limited to Iraq. It also occurred in Yemen, Egypt, and under Saddam Hussein, who used Jews as an outlet for popular frustration. In Algeria, Jews were stripped of national citizenship through the Nationality Code adopted in 1962 and later revised between 1964 and 1966. That code explicitly stated that to be recognized as Algerian, one had to be Muslim — a clear clause of exclusion, opening the door to legal action for state discrimination.
In Tunisia, exclusion took more insidious but equally effective forms. Unpublished but enforced administrative directives targeted Jewish exporters and wholesalers, depriving them of access to import and export licenses. Without these licenses, it became impossible to work, to run a business — and therefore to provide for one’s family. This compelled their departure. It was not a choice, but a necessity. Similarly, Jewish lawyers were struck from the Tunis Bar without any explicit law. From one day to the next, they were simply no longer allowed to practice. Once again, the absence of a law does not mean the absence of persecution: administrative arbitrariness was enough to exclude.
From Tunis to Paris: The Disrupted Life of Dinah Landier
Born in Tunisia in 1950, Dinah Landier left her homeland for France at the age of 14. She remembers a happy childhood in a sunny country, up until her family’s forced departure.
“Even though we lived in Tunisia, the Jews very quickly embraced French cultural and moral values. With the arrival of the Alliance Israélite in 1878, Jews gained access to modern education and never stopped learning. It’s part of our culture to seek emancipation and prosperity. But the Arab population couldn’t tolerate the community’s rise,” notes Dinah.
Raised in a deeply Zionist family, many of whom moved to Israel, Dinah has always felt a strong bond with the Jewish state. Tunisia’s independence on March 20, 1956, marked a turning point in Jewish life there.
“With the constitution adopted on June 1, 1959, Tunisia completely changed: the official religion was Islam, Arabic became the official language, and the country was now part of the ummah — the global Muslim community. From that point on, Jews faced gradual exclusion. My father, a merchant, began receiving documents in Arabic. Over time, we felt increasingly rejected and were forbidden from communicating with or even mentioning Israel. All Jewish institutions gradually disappeared — except the synagogues,” Dinah recalls.
“In August 1964, my father made the decision, without telling us, to have us leave Tunisia overnight. We ended up in a cramped, unfurnished apartment in Paris, having to start from scratch. We were foreigners, needing residency permits and trying to adjust to a new country — we felt alone. My parents were deeply unhappy. Two or three years after our arrival, I suffered from anorexia nervosa. But all I wanted was to overcome it. I eventually became a doctor. My father joined a company where he felt valued and eventually earned a good living. We managed to stabilize our lives,” she says.
The Erasure of Jewish Communities in Arab Countries
Between 1948 and 1979, between 950,000 and one million Jews were forced to flee or were expelled from Arab countries. Today, only about 6,000 to 8,000 remain, including those in Iran.
Traces of Jewish life have nearly vanished. In Morocco — still home to the largest Jewish community in the Arab world — around 2,000 Jews remain, mostly new arrivals, retirees or expats. Very few Moroccan-born Jews remain. Most synagogues have been converted or repurposed.
In Algeria, the erasure was even more radical: virtually all traces of Jewish presence have been destroyed. The same is true for Libya, Yemen, and Syria, where only a handful remain — around four people, according to the latest estimates.
Libya no longer has any Jews. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddafi’s regime briefly floated the idea of allowing Jews to return, even offering a billion-dollar compensation package for stolen property. This initiative, widely dismissed as a fantasy, was rooted in a deep antisemitic cliché — the belief that Jewish merchants would automatically bring prosperity to the country.
“The case of Yemen is just as dramatic. There may no longer be a single Jew left there. The official slogan of the Houthis, who control much of the country, is explicit: ‘Death to America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews.’ This hateful slogan, frequently seen on walls, perfectly captures the visceral hostility Jews face in some regions,” says Dahan.
Iran, meanwhile, presents a different case. Though not an Arab country, it is often included in this broader narrative of exile. Unlike elsewhere, the Jewish community in Iran has survived in greater numbers. Still, they live under tight surveillance and in a climate of ambiguity — tolerated officially, but facing latent antisemitism.
“People accuse Jews of being Zionists, but there’s a contradiction: they were expelled from Arab countries and now even their right to a homeland is denied,” Dinah laments.
The Observatory proudly affirms its strong connection to Israel, which officially recognized this history: in 2014, the Knesset established November 30 as the National Day for Jews Expelled from Arab Countries and Iran, in honor of nearly one million uprooted individuals. This symbolic gesture, both memorial and educational, marks a crucial step toward reintegrating this chapter into modern Jewish history.
To raise awareness, David and his team are preparing a major conference and exhibition retracing the history of Jews in Arab and Persian lands — from the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem to their uprooting in the latter half of the 20th century. The exhibition will feature 25 large panels, organized by date, highlighting the key stages of Jewish life during this time. Distinguished speaker Shmuel Trigano, honorary member of the association, will discuss the displacement of Jews from Arab countries.
The Observatory has also partnered with JJAC (Justice for Jews from Arab Countries), an organization that has been fighting for the same cause for over 20 years and contributed to the Abraham Accords negotiations to include the rights of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.
By advancing this cause across political, educational, and cultural domains, the Observatory confronts a double erasure: of the facts, and of public awareness. To recognize the Âkira is to repair — so that the descendants of the exiled may finally find their rightful place in the collective narrative.
Caroline Haïat
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