Israel-Lebanon agreement shines light on long-lost Jewish community

SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — Rabbi Elie Abadie left his native Lebanon more than five decades ago and has not even visited since, but his Lebanese roots remain an integral part of his identity.

He has 3,000 Arabic songs on his smart phone. His wife, an American, learned from his mother how to cook the Lebanese dishes he loves. When he speaks with his siblings, he uses a mixture of Arabic and French, like many citizens of Lebanon, a former French protectorate.

The once-thriving Lebanese Jewish community has been largely forgotten in the decades since most of them left the country. But the latest Israel-Hezbollah war — which pushed Lebanon and Israel into direct negotiations — has brought them under the spotlight again.

Last month, Israel agreed to release five civilians detained by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in exchange for Lebanon's help in searching for the bodies of Lebanese Jewish leaders abducted and killed in the 1980s, during Lebanon’s civil war.

The news stirred painful memories for Lebanese Jews like Abadie, 65, who was born and raised in Beirut to parents who moved to Lebanon from Syria . Abadie left his country of birth at 10 and settled for some years in Mexico. He is now based in Dubai, serving as the senior rabbi emeritus of the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf states.

He remembers the Lebanon of his childhood in the 1960s in its “best days” with “beautiful beaches and rivieras, mountain resorts, skiing resorts.”

His family, like many Lebanese Jews, left as anti-Jewish sentiment rose after the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries. Security fears have kept him away since, but Abadie hopes to come back one day to reopen Beirut's long-shuttered central synagogue.

“It is unfortunately a sad reality that, since Lebanon and the Jews go back over 3,000 years from the time of King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre and their peaceful and friendly relations, the situation in the last 50 years marked such a decline in Jewish population and life in Lebanon,” he said.

Nada Abdelsamad, a Lebanese journalist who wrote two books about Lebanon’s Jewish community, said the country once had between 18,000 and 20,000 Jews, many of them living in the central Beirut district of Wadi Abu Jmil, which was nicknamed the Valley of the Jews.

After the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948, many Jews fled other Arab countries like Syria and Iraq, where they faced increasing discrimination and sometimes violence, and came to Lebanon, a religiously diverse country where they felt safer. Some were then smuggled into Israel, but many stayed in Lebanon.

That changed after the 1967 war in which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria in addition to east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Lebanon was polarized between pro-West groups and others that supported Palestinian factions and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul-Nasser.

In 1969, Lebanon and Palestinian factions signed the Cairo Agreement, allowing the Palestinian groups to operate freely in Lebanon.

“From that day on, the Jewish community in Lebanon felt very insecure and threatened,” recalls Abadie. “We started seeing marches and protests in the streets of Lebanon, chanting, ‘Death to Israel and to the Jews.’”

His family left.

The situation deteriorated further after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 . With kidnappings by armed groups rampant, prominent figures from Lebanon’s dwindling Jewish community were taken by force from their homes, work or the streets. An organization calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth — believed to be linked to Hezbollah — was blamed.

At least seven Jews are among the 17,000 missing Lebanese people whose fate remains unknown decades after the 15-year war ended, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Jewish news agency says they include Isac Sasson, then-president of Lebanon’s Jewish community; doctor Elie Hallak, known for treating people from all religious sects at his Beirut clinic; and Salim Jamous, the Jewish community’s former secretary general. Several others were confirmed killed and their bodies recovered at the time.

Lebanese officials have not announced any breakthrough in discovering the fate of the missing Jews. It's not clear what will be done with their remains if they are found.

“In the end these are Lebanese citizens, and there is a legal process if they want to move them outside the country,” said Bassem El Hout, an attorney representing Lebanon's Jewish community.

Asked about Israel's interest in the disappeared Lebanese Jews, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, said, “Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, has a profound and enduring responsibility to Jews throughout the world" which “does not end at Israel’s borders, nor does it end with death.”

Judaism is still one of Lebanon’s 18 officially-recognized religious sects, but only a handful of Jews remain. El Hout said no one knows the exact number. Abadie estimated that about 20 Jews are scattered across the country.

“Not all of them profess publicly about their Jewish religion, except for maybe to close friends and neighbors," he said.

On voting lists of Lebanese citizens, about 4,000 Jews are still listed in Beirut and about 1,000 in the southern port city of Sidon, but many are likely living abroad.

El Hout said there are five remaining synagogues in Lebanon, the oldest of which is in Sidon.

A sign reading “the Jewish quarter” still stands in the narrow alleyways of Sidon’s old quarter, where the synagogue and some Jewish-owned homes are shuttered.

Taleb Kara Ahmed, who wrote several books about the city's Jewish community, said many left to Latin America before Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. When Israeli troops withdrew from Sidon in 1985, the last Jews left with them, taking copies of the Torah from the city’s synagogue, he said.

The current head of Lebanon's Jewish community, Samo Behar, declined to be interviewed or to give The Associated Press permission to film inside the shuttered century-old Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut, which was damaged during the civil war and renovated nearly two decades ago.

Dany Liniado left months after the outbreak of the civil war in 1975. She moved through several countries, including Israel, eventually settling in Mexico, which has a significant Lebanese Jewish diaspora. Many Lebanese Jews settled in the U.S., France and Brazil, as well as in Israel.

Two months after she left Lebanon, her father was detained in Beirut and beaten by gunmen who referred to him as “an Israeli agent,” before a prominent Lebanese politician secured his release and advised him to leave the country.

“When he reached me in Milan, he was not the same person,” Liniado said.

She has no plans to return, even to visit.

“For me, it's too late,” she said.

She cooks Lebanese dishes, listens to Lebanese songs and is proud of her “Lebanese DNA.” But now her identity is complicated. She lived in Israel for six years and also identifies as Israeli. Despite recent negotiations between their governments, the two countries remain officially at war.

“I am a Lebanese Jew but now I am everything. I can be Israeli, I can be French, I can be Mexican. You know what, I am a citizen of the world,” Liniado said by telephone from Mexico City. “I’m a Jewish citizen of the world."

Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer contributed to this report from Nahariya, Israel.