Maayan Kreitzman

On this day—November 2, 1945 Arab mobs in British-occupied Tripoli and Benghazi massacred 130+ Jews in three days of barbaric violence. Synagogues were burned, homes were looted, and entire families were wiped out. The British intervened slowly and inadequately. Violence against Jews spread across the Arab world. Two years later, on November 24, 1947, the head of the Egyptian delegation to the UN warned the establishment of a Jewish state would threaten “the lives of millions of Jews in Muslim countries” and “create in these countries an antisemitism even more difficult to uproot than the antisemitism the Allies tried to eradicate in Germany.” That prophecy was fulfilled almost immediately. After the November 29 UN partition vote, Jewish communities in Aden (80+ killed), Bahrain, Syria, and Egypt came under attack. In Mandate Palestine, Jews were attacked within hours. The targets were Jewish civilians, including bus ambushes, market massacres, ambushed convoys, and bodies were often mutilated. The war cry was “Itbah al-Yahud”—slaughter the Jews. The Secretary-General of the Arab League declared against the Jews, “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre that will be remembered like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades.” The ancient Jewish communities in what had become the Arab world were from there systematically attacked and ethnically cleansed.