SIDON – Rabbi Elie Abadie left Lebanon, his birthplace, more than 50 years ago and has not returned. Yet his Lebanese heritage remains central to who he is.
His smartphone holds 3,000 Arabic songs. His American wife learned to prepare his favorite Lebanese dishes from his mother. And when Abadie talks with his siblings, they switch between Arabic and French, a common combination in Lebanon, once a French protectorate.
Lebanon’s once-vibrant Jewish community has largely faded from public memory since most of its members left the country. But the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, which led Israel and Lebanon into direct negotiations, has brought the community’s history back into focus.
Last month, Israel agreed to free five civilians held by its forces in southern Lebanon in return for Lebanon’s assistance in locating the remains of Lebanese Jewish leaders who were abducted and killed during the country’s civil war in the 1980s.
The development revived painful memories for Lebanese Jews such as Abadie, 65. Born in Beirut to Syrian-born parents, he left Lebanon at age 10 and spent several years in Mexico. He now lives in Dubai, where he serves as senior rabbi emeritus of the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf states.
Abadie recalls his childhood in 1960s Lebanon as a time when the country was experiencing its “best days,” with “beautiful beaches and rivieras, mountain resorts, skiing resorts.”
Like many Lebanese Jews, his family departed as anti-Jewish sentiment intensified after the 1967 war between Israel and Arab states. Security concerns have prevented him from returning, but Abadie still hopes to one day go back and reopen Beirut’s long-closed 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.
A once-thriving community has scattered
Lebanon was once home to between 18,000 and 20,000 Jews, according to Nada Abdelsamad, a Lebanese journalist who has written two books about the community. Many lived in central Beirut’s Wadi Abu Jmil, a neighborhood known as the Valley of the Jews.
Following the 1948 war over Israel’s creation, many Jews left Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq, where discrimination and violence were increasing. They moved to Lebanon, a religiously diverse country where they initially felt safer. Some were smuggled into Israel, while many others remained in Lebanon.
The situation shifted after the 1967 war, when Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, as well as east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Lebanon became increasingly divided between pro-Western groups and factions that backed Palestinian organizations and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul-Nasser.
In 1969, Lebanon and Palestinian factions concluded the Cairo Agreement, which allowed Palestinian groups to operate freely inside the country.
“From that day on, the Jewish community in Lebanon felt very insecure and threatened,” Abadie recalled. “We started seeing marches and protests in the streets of Lebanon, chanting, ‘Death to Israel and to the Jews.’”
Abadie’s family left the country.
The outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 brought even greater danger. As armed-group kidnappings spread, prominent members of the shrinking Jewish community were seized from their homes, workplaces or the streets. Blame fell on an organization calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, which was believed to have links to Hezbollah.
Former Jewish leaders among 17,000 still missing after civil war
At least seven Jews are among the 17,000 Lebanese people who remain missing decades after the 15-year civil war ended, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The agency reported that those missing include Isac Sasson, who was president of Lebanon’s Jewish community; Dr. Elie Hallak, who treated patients from all religious communities at his Beirut clinic; and Salim Jamous, the community’s former secretary general. Several other Jewish figures were confirmed dead, and their remains were recovered at the time.
Lebanese authorities have made no announcement of a breakthrough in determining what happened to the missing Jews. It also remains unclear how their remains would be handled if they are eventually 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.
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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.”
A small community remains
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.
History left people with complicated identities
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.”
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Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer contributed to this report from Nahariya, Israel.
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