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When the Jews Fled from Arab Lands
(Wall Street Journal) Lucette Lagnado - Shortly after the UN vote that laid the groundwork for the creation of Israel in 1947, mobs stormed the Jewish Quarter of the Syrian city of Aleppo where Jews and Muslims had lived together for centuries. Fortunee Abadie, now 88, remembers watching attackers burn prayer books, prayer shawls and other holy objects from the synagogue. She heard the screams of neighbors as their homes were invaded. "We thought we were going to be killed," she says. Israeli officials say the hardships faced by several hundred thousand Jews from Arab lands, many forced from their homes, deserve as much attention as the plight of displaced Palestinians. The Six-Day War of June 1967 brought some of the most violent anti-Jewish eruptions. In Egypt, Jewish men over 18 were rounded up and sent to prison. Some were kept for a few days. Others, like Philadelphia Rabbi Albert Gabbai, a Cairo native, remained imprisoned for three years.