JIMENAMEDIA's video: Mizrahi Women Founders in Conversation

Mizrahi women activists in conversation about leadership, identity, feminism, antisemitism, and building an international movement that pursues recognition and justice for the one million Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Panelests include: Gina Bublil-Waldman As a young woman Gina Bublil-Waldman was ethnically cleansed from Tripoli, Libya along with the vast majority of her Jewish community. Settling in the United States in the early 1970s Gina has spent the last 50 years dedicating herself to the cause of freedom and human rights. Gina led the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and was instrumental in winning freedom for thousands of Soviet Jews. Waldman also fought human rights abuses in Argentina and Chile, during Augusto Pinochet’s regime and in the early 1990’s she helped in the resettlement of Muslim refugees from Bosnia to the San Francisco Bay Area. Gina founded JIMENA in 2002 to bear witness to the experiences and stories of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. www.jimena.org Rachel Wahba Rachel Wahba is a San Francisco Bay Area based writer, psychotherapist and the co-founder of Olivia Travel, a lesbian travel and resort company. An Egyptian-Iraqi Jew, Rachel was born in India and grew up stateless in Japan. The many dimensions of her exile and displacement are a constant theme in her professional work as well as her activism and writing. Rachel is a published author of several anthologies relating to being a Mizrahi/Sephardi Jew of Egyptian and Iraqi parents and the indignities suffered by Jews who were forced into second class(dhimmi) status in their homelands. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/rachel-wahba/ Lyn Julius The British-born daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Lyn Julius founded Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, in 2005. This organisation aims to raise awareness of the history and culture of the vanishing, pre-Islamic Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. It also seeks to advocate for their rights. A journalist and blogger, Lyn has a daily blog about Jews from Arab and Muslim lands with a global following, Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.blogspot.com). After years of research, Lyn’s book Uprooted (Vallentine Mitchell) describes the plight of over 850,000 Jews, displaced from their homes in Africa and the Middle East after the Second World War. She intertwines personal case studies with first class historical research and clarity. https://www.harif.org/