Podcasts about darfuri

Today's HeadlinesSudan war enters third year todaySudanese flee war as Darfuri people encounter JesusApproaching trauma healing with the Great Healer

As the war in Sudan nears its third devastating year the situation for children has reached a critical point, with an estimated 825,000 children trapped in and around the besieged Darfuri city of Al-Fasher alone, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).The ongoing conflict between rival militaries continues to displace thousands, while the collapse of essential services has left children vulnerable to death, disease, and malnutrition.Speaking to UN News's Abdelmonem Makki from Port Sudan, Eva Hinds, advocacy and communications chief for UNICEF Sudan, delivered a stark assessment of the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding.

On Daybreak Africa: France will hand back to Ivory Coast its only military base in the west African country in a ceremony on February 20, sources with knowledge of the talks told the French News Agency. The move follows the forced departure of its troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where military-led governments hostile to the former colonial ruler have seized power in recent years. Plus, the UN Secretary General makes a personal appeal for peace in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, leaders of the Southern African Development Community and the East Africa Community meet Friday to discuss the conflict in eastern DRC. Senegal plans to rename public places once named after French colonial figures. Some NGOs that work with HIV-positive communities in South Africa are in limbo, after Washington puts a 90-day freeze on aid. Darfuri women face sexual violence in war and refuge. For these and more, tune in to Daybreak Africa!

Today we're bringing you a bonus episode on Sudan and Gaza from Crisis Group's Global Podcast Hold Your Fire!.In this episode of Hold Your Fire!, Richard is joined by Crisis Group experts Alan Boswell, Shewit Woldemichael, Rami Dajani and Rob Blecher about the latest from Sudan's western Darfur region and from Gaza. Richard first talks to Alan and Shewit about the worsening violence in North Darfur. As the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces encircle the city of al-Fashar, the last Darfuri capital held by the Sudanese army, and both sides build up forces, they talk about the implications of an all-out battle for the city. They also discuss the legacy of the 2020 Juba peace agreement and why some Darfuri former rebels have now chosen to fight alongside the Sudanese army against the RSF. Richard then talks to Rami and Rob about Israel's incursion this past week into Gaza's southernmost city, Rafah. They discuss prospects for talks over a ceasefire-hostage release deal in Cairo, the views of both Hamas and the Israeli government on what such a deal should entail and Israeli politics around the Rafah offensive. They also talk about the difficulties of aid delivery and famine risks in both Sudan and Gaza. For more on the topics discussed in this episode, check out our statement Sudan: A Year of War and our report Stopping Famine in Gaza. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Hold Your Fire!, Richard is joined by Crisis Group experts Alan Boswell, Shewit Woldemichael, Rami Dajani and Rob Blecher about the latest from Sudan's western Darfur region and from Gaza. Richard first talks to Alan and Shewit about the worsening violence in North Darfur. As the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces encircle the city of al-Fashar, the last Darfuri capital held by the Sudanese army, and both sides build up forces, they talk about the implications of an all-out battle for the city. They also discuss the legacy of the 2020 Juba peace agreement and why some Darfuri former rebels have now chosen to fight alongside the Sudanese army against the RSF. Richard then talks to Rami and Rob about Israel's incursion this past week into Gaza's southernmost city, Rafah. They discuss prospects for talks over a ceasefire-hostage release deal in Cairo, the views of both Hamas and the Israeli government on what such a deal should entail and Israeli politics around the Rafah offensive. They also talk about the difficulties of aid delivery and famine risks in both Sudan and Gaza. For more on the topics discussed in this episode, check out our statement Sudan: A Year of War and our report Stopping Famine in Gaza. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Trudy Goodman speaks with Tyler Lapkin of the Joseph Campbell Foundation.One of the earliest teachers of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Trudy taught with its creator, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at the MBSR clinic at University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1983. In 1995 she co-founded, and is still the Guiding Teacher at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, the first center in the world dedicated to exploring the synergy of these two disciplines. She was an early adopter and now smiles  seeing mindfulness everywhere.After becoming a mother, Trudy was fascinated by human development, and studied w Jean Piaget in Geneva, Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jerome Bruner at Harvard. Trudy co-founded a school for distressed children, practicing mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, parents, teenagers, couples and individuals. She enjoys the company of kids of all ages and has kept her own child-like wonder and curiosity about the world she loves.Since 1974, Trudy has devoted much of her life to practicing Buddhist meditation with great Asian and Western teachers in the Zen and Theravada traditions. From 1991 to 1998, Trudy was a resident Zen teacher at the Cambridge Buddhist Association. She then moved to Los Angeles and founded InsightLA, the first center in the world to combine training in both Buddhist Insight (Vipassana) Meditation and non-sectarian mindfulness and compassion practices. Trudy has always been a connector of people, spiritual traditions, cultures, and communities, carrying her Zen delight across the divides.Trudy has trained a new generation of teachers, mindfulness humanitarians who make mindfulness and meditation classes available for professional caregivers, social justice and environmental activists, first responders, teachers, and unsung individuals working on the front lines of suffering – all done with tenderness, courage and a simple commitment to holding hands together.Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide – from the hallowed halls of Mazu Daoyi's Ch'an monastery in China, to leading trainings on the ground in the intense heat of Darfuri refugee camps in Eastern Chad on the Sudanese border. She has loved it all. Trudy is still creating new projects and good trouble wherever she can. Details to be found in her forthcoming memoir!In the conversation today we discuss her life, meditation, mindfulness, and her perspective on the famous Campbell quote, "Participate Joyfully in the sorrows of the world".To learn more about Trudy visit: https://www.trudygoodman.com/ For more information on the MythMaker Podcast Network and Joseph Campbell, visit JCF.org. To subscribe to our weekly MythBlasts go to jcf.org/subscribeThe Podcast With A Thousand Faces is hosted by Tyler Lapkin and is a production of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. It is produced by Tyler Lapkin. Executive producer, John Bucher. Audio mixing and editing by Charles Mallett.All music exclusively provided by APM Music (apmmusic.com)

Financier, philanthropist, and longtime president of the World Sephardi Federation Nessim Gaon was proud of the Sudanese birthright that made him part of a long lineage of Jews from Arab lands. However, with growing antisemitism in Sudan, he also believed Israel offered the only safe haven for Jews around the world and devoted his life to constantly improving the Zionist project.  Gaon's oldest grandchild, Dr. Alexandra Herzog, deputy director of Contemporary Jewish Life for American Jewish Committee, shares the story of her grandfather's flight from Sudan, his quest for equality in Israel, and his pursuit of peace between the Jewish state and Arab nations that led to the historic 1979 accord between Israel and Egypt. Along with Dr. Herzog, oral historian Daisy Abboudi describes great changes in Sudan that take place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw the country emerge from a period of Islamic extremism to a land of possibilities for Jewish pioneers. However, this brief window of openness closes once again as Gaon's cousins, Diana Krief and Flore Eleini, describe how following Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, Sudan once again became a terrifying place to be a Jew.  ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  Saza Niye Glemedin; Penceresi Yola Karsi: all by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Hatikvah (National Anthem Of Israel, Electric Guitar)”; Composer: Composer: Eli Sibony; ID#122561081 “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “A Middle East Lament”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Dan Cullen (PRS), IPI#551977321 “Mystic Anatolia”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Alpha (ASCAP); Composer: Okan Akdeniz (MSG), IPI#37747892568 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Fields Of Elysium”; Publisher: Mysterylab Music; Composer: Mott Jordan; ID#79549862 ___ Episode Transcript: ALEXANDRA HERZOG: Oftentimes, I asked him, would you want to go visit Sudan? If you could, would you? And you know, he would tell me, ‘Well, I have this image in my head. And I want to keep it that way.' And I think that it was so loaded for him in terms of memories, in terms of, you know, vibrancy of life and I think he wanted to keep it as this frozen image. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience.  This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: Leaving Sudan MANYA: When Diana Krief and her 95-year-old mother Flore Eleini look back on their family's life in Sudan, they conjure dark memories. Flore remembers enjoying afternoon tea outside with her mother-in-law when soldiers armed with bayonets stormed the garden. FLORE ELEINI: Life was normal, life was good. And then, little by little. it deteriorated. We were the very, very last Jews to stay in the Sudan. And then, after the Six Day War, of course, they came, you know, in the street, they were shouting, kill, kill, kill, kill the Jews, kill, kill, kill the Jews. And one day, I thought it was our end. MANYA: Her daughter Diana remembers soldiers raiding their house and posters of decapitated Jews outside their home. DIANA KRIEF: It's actually by others that I came to know that I was Jewish, that I was a Jew, you know, born in a Jewish family. They used to come in front of the house with posters of Jews in the Mediterranean Sea with their heads cut off, and blood everywhere. That's the first time I had actually seen the land of Israel. I didn't know that we had a land before.  And it was “itbah” the whole time. And even when we would put the radio on, they would sing“itbah itbah al yahud.” That means “slaughter, slaughter the Jews”. And this always stayed in my memory. MANYA: In 1968, Flore and Diana were among the last Jews to flee Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan. They followed a path to Geneva blazed by Flore's cousin, Nessim Gaon, a financier and philanthropist born and raised in Sudan who had moved from Khartoum to Switzerland a decade earlier.  Gaon, who died in May 2022 at the age of 100, was a legend in modern Jewish history. As a longtime president of the World Sephardi Federation, he worked to raise the profile of Sephardic Jews around the world and level the playing field for them in Israel – where Arabic speaking Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews were often looked down upon.  On the contrary, Gaon believed they offered Israel a gift – a link between the Jewish state and their former homes in the Arab world. Gaon himself offered a shining example. He persuaded his dear friend, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to meet with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, which led to the historic 1979 accord between Israel and Egypt – the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab nation. ALEXANDRA: For him when Israel was built, it really was like a miracle. He really, truly believed in the possibilities that Israel could offer. He also realized that Sephardic Jews could play a role in creating a bridge between Israel and the Arab countries, and that they would be able to help in creating peace or at least creating dialogue between some of those countries. And that's really what he did in his conversations with Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin.  MANYA: That's Gaon's oldest grandchild, Dr. Alexandra Herzog, who now serves as the deputy director of Contemporary Jewish Life for American Jewish Committee. As her last name indicates, her mother Marguerite, Gaon's daughter, married into the Herzog dynasty. Alexandra's paternal grandfather was former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, and her uncle Isaac Herzog, is the Israeli president today.  But in addition to that proud legacy, Alexandra is especially proud of the impact her maternal grandfather made in helping Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews – a slight majority of Israel's Jewish population, but a significant majority of its Jewish poor – thrive, succeed, and lead in the Jewish state. Gaon was the driving force behind Project Renewal, an initiative launched in the 1970s to rehabilitate some of Israel's most distressed neighborhoods and improve education and social services there. He developed a bar mitzvah program that provided the education, ceremony, and gifts for thousands of underprivileged boys. And tens of thousands of young Sephardi leaders from impoverished neighborhoods received university scholarships. ALEXANDRA: A lot of the people who came out of this program are actually mayors or members of the Knesset – important people in Israel who actually have, as a ripple effect, a strong impact on the lives of other people as well. MANYA: The history of Sudan's once tiny and tight-knit Jewish community is limited to the late 19th and early 20th centuries – a brief window when it was safe to be Jewish in that Northeast African country. But the Sudanese diaspora's connection to that country runs unusually deep.  Sudan, Egypt's neighbor to the south, was much more than a waystation during the age of migration. It was a land of possibilities. Even if their forefathers spent centuries elsewhere, their descendants today often identify with the fleeting generations spent in Sudan. DAISY ABBOUDI: If you speak to people who were there, and you say, where are you from, they will say, Sudan, in a very proud, but definitive way. MANYA: That's Daisy Abboudi, a London-based oral historian of Sudanese Jewish history, who began her career by interviewing her own grandparents. DAISY: Sudanese is very much part of their identity and their descendants kind of focus on Sudan. And I know, there's this kind of phenomena from around the Middle East – a kind of nostalgia of looking back. There's kind of an inherited nostalgia that exists as well. But it's particularly strong in Sudan for a country where people didn't have thousands of years of roots. And I'm kind of always wondering, why? Why has it got this pull? MANYA: The reason could be embedded in the history of Sudan and the pioneering spirit of the Jews who landed in this rustic pocket of Northeast Africa, where the Blue and White Nile Rivers converged, the constellations shone brightly in the night sky, and the scent of jasmine and gardenia floated in the air. In the early 19th century, Sudanese and Egyptian residents lived under Ottoman rule. Jews in Egypt – and the few there might have been in Sudan – faced harsh taxes. But that changed toward the end of the 19th century, as the Ottoman Empire fell, and British forces took over Egypt, before moving south. With them came Christian missionaries who intended to “civilize” the tribes there. An opposition and independence movement began to build, led by a self-proclaimed Mahdi, who claimed to be the foretold redeemer of the Islamic nation. The 1966 epic film, Khartoum, depicts the infamous 1884 Siege of Khartoum, in which the Mahdi, portrayed by Hollywood superstar Laurence Olivier, defeated the popular British General Charles Gordon, played by another Hollywood legend of Ten Commandments fame, Charlton Heston. DAISY: When this independence movement starts, it's led by a man who calls himself the Mahdi, which means the kind of chosen one, and he wins, basically. He conquers Sudan quite quickly and then promptly dies of malaria and his successor takes over. But this period of independence, once it was established, is called the Mahdia, after the Mahdi.  It was an Islamic state, basically in that it was quite extremist. All the non-Muslim people living in Sudan had to convert to Islam. This was a law that was targeted at the missionaries who were there, but of course these Jews that were living there got caught up in that policy. MANYA: When the British conquered the Mahdi in 1898, that conversion law was revoked, and some converts reverted back to Judaism. The British built a railway line to supply the army and connect Egypt to Khartoum, the capital of the dual British-Egyptian colony. And soon, Sudan became a destination for Jewish families who sought to build economic opportunities from the ground up. DAISY: It was a kind of a mercantile community, a lot of shops, import-exports, cloth, gum Arabic, hibiscus. A couple of families grew and then traded hibiscus, which was like the main ingredient in cough syrup at the time. Don't forget, at that time, Sudan was very new – Khartoum especially, in terms of on the map in terms of European consciousness, obviously not new in terms of how long it's actually been there. But it was kind of seen or perceived as this new frontier. It was a bit off the beaten track.  There wasn't the mod cons or luxuries even of the day. So, it was people who were willing to take a little bit of a risk and dive into the unknown who would actually go to Sudan. MANYA: According to historian Naham Ilan, though the community was deeply traditional, it was largely secular and introduced many of Sudan's modern conveniences.  Morris Goldenberg from Cairo was the first optician in Khartoum. Jimmy and Toni Cain, refugees from Germany, ran a music hall and cabaret. Jewish students attended private Christian schools. By 1906, the Jewish community of Egypt invited Rabbi Solomon Malka, a Moroccan rabbi who was ordained in British Mandate Palestine, to lead Sudan's Jewish community. He was supposed to stay for only a few years, but instead stayed and purchased his own manufacturing plants, producing sesame oil and macaroni. His son Eli would later write the foundational history of the community titled Jacob's Children in the Land of the Mahdi: Jews of the Sudan. DAISY: When Rabbi Malka came, he was the shochet, he was the mohel, he was the rabbi. He was everything, it was a one-man band. The community was already kind of focused in Khartoum in 1928 when the synagogue was built. The club was built in 1947. I think the peak in terms of numbers of the community was early to mid-1950s. And that was about 250 families. So even at its peak, it was a very small community. MANYA: Community is the key word. Everyone knew each other, looked out for each other, and when Israel was created in 1948, they raised money to help some of their fellow Jews seek opportunities in that new frontier. Those who left weren't fleeing Sudan – not yet. That shift didn't happen for at least another decade. When things did start to turn, Nessim Gaon would lead the exodus. He had seen what could happen when Jews ignored warning signs and stayed where they were unwelcome for too long. Gaon's family arrived in the early 20th Century when his father got a job working as a clerk for the British governor of Port Sudan. Gaon was born in Khartoum in 1922. ALEXANDRA: As for a lot of Sephardi families, they basically moved with opportunities and changes of power in different countries. So they went from Spain, to Italy, back to Spain. And then they went into the Arab lands. So I know that they went into Iraq, then they went into Turkey. And they spent quite some time actually in Turkey, until they finally went to Sudan and Egypt. MANYA: As a young man, Gaon left to attend the London School of Economics. Shortly after he returned, he encountered British officers recruiting soldiers to fight for Winston Churchill's campaign against the Nazis.  ALEXANDRA: He just went in, signed up, and the next day, he was sent to the front. His family was not so excited about that. And he was actually under age, he wasn't really supposed to be able to sign up at that time. But when they figured out his age, you know, in the army, it was already too late. He just felt that he needed to be useful and do something. And that's what he did.  MANYA: Though he knew about the uneasy life for Jews in Sudan preceding his family's arrival there, what Gaon witnessed during World War II while stationed in places like Iraq ensured he would never take for granted his safety as a Jew. ALEXANDRA: Even though he never spoke about all of the things that he saw in great detail, he did a lot after the war, to help survivors go to Israel. It was very important to him to try to help those who had survived to actually go into a place of safety. He knew what it meant to be a Jew in danger. MANYA: Gaon and his future wife of 68 years, Renee [Tamman], exchanged letters every day when he was away at war and kept every single one. And after his return, from that point on, they never spent more than three days apart. The couple soon began to build their family. But because of rudimentary medical care in Sudan, it was difficult. Three of their children died before their daughter Marguerite was born in 1956. They were buried in Khartoum's Jewish cemetery. Sudan became independent in 1956. But the ties to Egypt ran deep. Later that year, when French, British, and Israeli forces attacked Egypt over Gamel Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, the anti-Jewish tensions trickled south. DAISY: The Suez Crisis, in the end of 1956, kind of spikes a bit of antisemitism. There is a talk in the newspapers about antisemitism, Zionist things, plots. There were a few things that made life slightly more difficult, but not in a very impactful way on daily life. MANYA: There were other signs too. When the winner of the Miss Khartoum beauty pageant was discovered to be Jewish, she lost her crown. When Jews had matza imported from London for Passover, it had to be packaged in plain boxes without a Magen David. Given what Gaon had witnessed in World War II, that was enough to leave. He, his wife, and only daughter at the time went to Geneva. ALEXANDRA: That was a blooming community, they were happy, they were together. And they were able to create and expand on their Jewish life. And I think that, at some point, when it became clear, when they saw the signs of that antisemitism coming their way again, they just felt like, “OK, we've seen this before, not just in Sudan, but also from the history of the Holocaust. And we need to take proactive measures, and make sure that we're safe. MANYA: When they left, Gaon and his wife told no one. They packed only enough bags for a vacation. They even left the doors unlocked and food in the refrigerator so no one dropping by their home would get suspicious. ALEXANDRA:  My grandmother always told us how some part of her broke a little when they just left the house. They really pretended that they were just going out and they would come back. They would tell us how hard it was when they turned and they looked at the house the last time and they knew that they had left most of their things. That they had a whole history there. That they had children there who were still going to be there and it was really difficult. And so, they took everything [with] them, left to Switzerland, and made a life there. MANYA: The decade that followed was particularly tumultuous in Sudan. The country had its first coup of many, and a military government took over. In 1960, all of the Jews who had left Sudan had their citizenship revoked. Another revolution in 1964 restored civilian rule.  DAISY: It's at that time, that a lot of the north-south tension kind of comes into things. And there was a lot of violence in that revolution, a lot of rioting. And the violence was tribal, north-south tribalism, a lot of violence against southern tribes, people from the South in Sudan.  But that scared the Jewish community that there would be violence and murders in the streets, and that signaled that this was no longer this stable country that they had been living in. And that's when more people start to leave. MANYA: By this point, acquiring an exit visa had become difficult for Jews, especially those who owned businesses and properties. Much like Gaon and his wife had left under cover of vacation, people began acquiring tourist visas with return tickets they never used. In the summer of 1967, the Six-Day War became a flashpoint in Khartoum. DAISY: There was a lot of rhetoric against Jews, in the newspapers, accusations of Zionism, Zionist spies, slurs, the lot. The Jewish young men who didn't know the right people to avoid it, were arrested for the duration of the war, and then released subsequently. And then after the Six Day War, the Arab League Summit, and the declaration of the three Nos. That actually happened in Khartoum, so you can imagine the atmosphere in Khartoum at that time was not pleasant. MANYA: The Three Nos. No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel, No negotiations with Israel. These were the pillars of the Khartoum Resolution, the Arab world's proclamation denying self-determination for the Jewish people in their biblical homeland. The Arab League Summit convened in Khartoum on August 29, 1967 and the resolution was adopted days later. Flore recalls how Muslim friends and colleagues suddenly turned on them. Returning home from a trip, her husband Ibrahim's business partner brought back a framed picture and insisted that Ibrahim read its engraved inscription out loud: “The world will not have peace until the last Jew is put to death by stoning,” it said. Another friend asked Flore one day where she hid the device she used to communicate with Israel, implying she was a spy. During a visit to Geneva, Ibrahim was warned not to return because there was a price on his head. Flore said their delayed departure was a source of tension between her and her husband, who even for years afterward, couldn't believe his beloved Sudan had betrayed them. But the time had come for most Jews, including the extended family that Nessim Gaon had left behind, to abandon their homes and fortunes in Sudan and join him. FLORE: My husband had confidence in them. And we had a lot of problems between my husband and me because of this. Because I said ‘Ibrahim, this is not a country for us.' He says: ‘You don't know anything. They won't harm us. They won't do that.' He had confidence, he couldn't believe it. Until my husband became very old. He died at the age of 94. And he always, always, in his heart, he said that they cannot harm us. But he had illusions. He had illusions. MANYA: The Gaons also could not return. It was simply too dangerous. But in the 1970s, when Nessim Gaon learned vandals might have desecrated the Jewish cemetery in Khartoum, he resolved to retrieve their children and other family members who were buried there. From a distance, he coordinated an airlift for several prominent Sudanese families, including Rabbi Malka's descendants, to transfer the remains of their loved ones out of Sudan to be reburied in Jerusalem where he knew they would be safer. It was this sincere belief about the promise of Israel and the promise of peace in the region that led Gaon to encourage and attend a meeting between Menachem Begin and Anwar el-Sadat in 1977. ALEXANDRA: He saw opportunities there to create a peace with Egypt and he told Menachem Begin we can create peace with the Arab countries. And so Menachem Begin took him to meet with Anwar el-Sadat. They had a meeting and they hit it off right away, because they spoke the same language, they came from the same place.  MANYA: Over the next two years, Gaon worked discreetly in the background to ease both of their minds, find common ground, and reach a consensus. When the two leaders were ready to sign a treaty in 1979, Gaon gave them both the Swiss pens they used to make it official.  ALEXANDRA: They actually called him first thing after signing, and told him: ‘Nessim, it happened. We did it.' And, you know, it was something that he was very proud of, but that we were not really allowed to talk about in the outside.  He truly believed in the possibilities, in the outcome. That's what he focused on. He wanted to better the lives of people both in Israel and in Egypt, and he cared about, you know, the Sephardi Jews that were part of that narrative as well. MANYA: Sudan was one of only two Arab nations who supported the accord. Egypt was suspended from the Arab League for ten years and el-Sadat was assassinated in 1981.  Still, Gaon never stopped trying to pave the way for more peace negotiations. In fact, much later Israel tapped him to meet privately with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Unfortunately, the outcome was not the same. ALEXANDRA: We did not really want him to go and meet with Arafat because we were worried. I mean, Arafat had a long history of terrorism and we were a little bit scared. Arafat actually told him that at some point, there was a murder order on his head. They were considering killing my grandfather. And they decided not to, because he realized that he was an Arab like him. When my grandfather told us about this, we all went like, [gasp], what are you saying? But he was very calm about it. And he said: ‘You know, I, I stood there and Arafat told [me], I knew that you were doing a lot of good things. And you know, you were not doing anything bad towards the Arab populations. And you are very respectful. This is your background as well. And so we decided not to go ahead with it.' But I think my grandfather found it very difficult to talk to Arafat. And Arafat was not ready to make peace. MANYA: By this time Gaon had become a grandfather, Alexandra's Nono – the one who taught her how to whistle and play backgammon. The one who blessed her before long trips. The one who taught her his first language, Arabic. The one who passed down his love for the beauty of Sephardic Jewry and his concern about it being overshadowed and undervalued around the world and in Israel. ALEXANDRA: He was so idealistic about Israel, and really believed in it and thought it was such an important project. He also was very critical of it in terms of its treatment of Sephardic Jews. He was very sensitive to it, and he really worked hard to change that.  He was a little bit darker skinned. And he came from Sudan, he was born there. So he saw himself really, as a Sephardic Jew who had the opportunity here to educate this new country and to help this new country understand how Sephardic Jews could actually help and be positive agents within the country. MANYA: He also believed that the Jewish world must acknowledge and respect its own rich diversity for the benefit of everyone – Jewish, non-Jewish, Israeli or Diaspora. As president of the World Sephardi Federation, he traveled the world to encourage others to step up and show that Jewish history is not just an Eastern European, Ashkenazi narrative. ALEXANDRA: The more you're open to people who come from a different background, the more you also know how to interact with non-Jews and with countries that are maybe antagonistic to you. I think that it was a way for him to sort of bridge conflict to say: if you make an effort within the Jewish people, then you learn how to talk to everybody. MANYA: Daisy Abboudi said telling the stories of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews is complicated. Are they migrants? Are they refugees? What do they want to be called, and why? And then there's the ambivalence some Israelis have had about welcoming all Jews, some of whom still feel affection for nations that wish Israel did not exist. In their eyes, it's a fine line between affection and loyalty. DAISY: It's not an easily packaged short story. It feeds into so many different kinds of strands and politics and it's such a messy period of history anyway, with colonialism and the end of colonialism and nationalism, and, and, and, and. I think it is too big and too much for people to kind of get their heads around. And so people just don't. MANYA: But Gaon believed that leveling the playing field and making sure everyone has equal opportunities to education and leadership is where it starts. As part of Project Renewal, he often walked the streets of the most distressed neighborhoods in Israel to hear firsthand what residents there needed and advocated for them. In addition to the scholarships, bar mitzvah programs, and Project Renewal initiative, Gaon also held court at the King David Hotel whenever he traveled to Jerusalem. Sephardi residents would line up around the block to meet the man who invested and believed in them. ALEXANDRA: Years later, when he was quite influential, he got a letter from the Sudanese government to tell him that they would love it if he took back the nationality. At the time, he decided not to.  He wanted to keep the memories and the life that he had in Sudan and all of the legacy of Sudan without specifically being connected to a government or a political situation that he disagreed with and that was difficult and unpleasant to Jews. I know that oftentimes, I asked him, would you want to go visit Sudan? If you could, would you? And you know, he would tell me, ‘Well, I have this image in my head. And I want to keep it that way.' And I think that it was so loaded for him in terms of memories, in terms of, you know, vibrancy of life and what he experienced, and I think he wanted to leave it that way, and not be sort of surprised or sad, or, shocked by the changes possibly. I think he wanted to keep it as this frozen image. I hope that one day I can go both to Sudan and to Egypt and see those places myself and get a sense of putting the pieces of the puzzle together and getting a sense of what life might have been. MANYA:  It's unclear when it will be safe for Jews to travel to Sudan again. Between November 1984 and January 1985, Sudanese, Israeli and U.S. officials worked with Gaon and Alexandra's father, Joel Herzog, to facilitate an airlift of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps in Sudan to Israel. Operation Moses, as it was called, ended abruptly in January 1985 as soon as Sudan's Arab allies caught wind of the joint effort, stranding many Ethiopian Jews there. Some were eventually rescued, but not all.  ALEXANDRA: He not only helped fund the mission, which was very secretive, but he also took care of all of the details of the infrastructure from making sure that they could take a bus, to the plane, to a ship. He really took care of all of the details. And it was important to him because he wanted to make sure that fellow Jews would be in a place of safety. MANYA: Tribal conflict and civil wars also have continued. Feeling neglected by Khartoum, the largely agrarian South Sudan gained independence in 2011 after two civil wars. Warring factions within the South agreed to a coalition government in 2020.  Meanwhile, since 2003, millions of Darfuri men, women and children from three different ethnic groups have been targeted in what is considered the first genocide of the 21st Century – atrocities that continue today.  In 2019, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was pushed out of office by a series of peaceful protests. The following year, Sudan's fledgling civilian government announced its intentions to join the Abraham Accords as part of a larger effort to engage with the international community and secure international assistance. This included an agreement by the United States to remove Sudan from its state sponsor of terrorism list. But yet another military coup in 2021 derailed any efforts toward diplomacy and that plan was put on hold until a civilian government is restored.  Gaon died before seeing it become a reality.  ALEXANDRA: He really saw Sudan as his home. That was the place that he knew, that he grew up in. And I mean, again, he had gone to London before to study, he still came back to Sudan. You know, he went to war, he came back to Sudan and came with a lot of different layers of understanding of what it meant to be a Jew, in a lot of different countries, a lot of different places.  MANYA: Alexandra said he carried those layers and lessons with him throughout his life, as well as immense pride that he came from a long lineage of people living in Arab lands. For Nessim Gaon, the Jewish tradition was and always should be a big, diverse, inclusive tent. ALEXANDRA: One of the memories that really sticks with me is how during the Kohanim prayers at the synagogue, my grandfather would take his tallit, his prayer shawl, and put it on top of all of his children and grandchildren. And my grandmother would do the exact same thing with us in the women's section.  And of course, from time to time I would peek and look at this beautiful tent that was extended above all of my family members. And what was really special to me, was how we knew at that moment that we were being blessed by both my grandparents and that if someone was around and looked completely alone, they were welcomed under our tent.  And this really represents for me, what my grandparents were, they were warm. They were inclusive, loving and generous. And really they extended the tent, our family tent, to all the Jewish people. MANYA: Sudanese Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to Alexandra, Flore, and Diana for sharing their families' stories. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod, brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus.  Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.  

Seekordse saate teema on Sudaani ajalugu 20.-21. sajandil, Aafrika kõige pikem kodusõda Põhja ja Lõuna-Sudaani vahel (1955-72 ja 1983-2005) ning Darfuri konflikt (alates 2003).

African Union and United Nations peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region are carrying out their final patrols as the thirteen year mission officially comes to an end. Following a peace deal with rebel groups in October the Sudanese government is to take over security in the region where hundreds of thousands have died since conflict broke out in 2003. One and a half million people still live in displacement camps in Darfur. Attacks in the region are still common and many civilians are concerned about the imminent pull out of peacekeepers. We hear from the head of the UN mission, and a Darfuri living in exile. Also in the programme: Today marks the official end of Britain's 40-year membership of the European Union; and the rapid surge in Covid-19 cases in the UK is being attributed to the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus which is highly infectious… Britain prides itself on probably having the world's best surveillance programme, so why does the US compare so badly? (Photo: Sudanese children walk past an armoured vehicle of the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) in Kalma Camp for internally displaced people in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on December 30, 2020. - The United Nations Security Council has agreed to end the UNAMID's long-running peacekeeping mission in Darfur when its mandate ceases on December 31. The withdrawal of UNAMID, deployed since 2007 and which had 16,000 peacekeepers at its peak, will begin January 1 and is expected to be completed by June 30 2021. Credit: AFP via Getty Images)

The Security Council on Tuesday voted to end the hybrid UN-African Union civilian support operation for Darfur, UNAMID, beginning the drawdown on 1 January. It marks the end of a force that can withdraw, knowing that government is now “in the right hands”, according to the UN Joint Special Representative, Jeremiah Mamabolo, although as he tells UN News in this exclusive interview it does not mean the UN is leaving. Mr. Mamabolo begin by telling Abdelmonem Makki of our UN News Arabic team and a Darfuri himself, what UNAMID had achieved since 2007, beyond fulfilling its core mandate of keeping civilians safe.

The Security Council on Tuesday voted to end the hybrid UN-African Union civilian support operation for Darfur, UNAMID, beginning the drawdown on 1 January. It marks the end of a force that can withdraw, knowing that government is now “in the right hands”, according to the UN Joint Special Representative, Jeremiah Mamabolo, although as he tells UN News in this exclusive interview it does not mean the UN is leaving. Mr. Mamabolo begin by telling Abdelmonem Makki of our UN News Arabic team and a Darfuri himself, what UNAMID had achieved since 2007, beyond fulfilling its core mandate of keeping civilians safe.

After more than a decade evading charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, a Sudanese suspect, Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, widely known as Ali Kushayb, finally appeared in court. On Monday, the 70-year-old could be seen via video link from an International Criminal Court (ICC) detention center, where he had been transferred last week after surrendering himself in the Central African Republic.The prosecution in The Hague spent 30 minutes reading out more than 50 charges against Kushayb, an alleged senior leader of the Janjaweed, a government-supported Arab militia responsible for atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan.The conflict, which the United States later called a genocide against Indigenous Africans, left an estimated 300,00 people dead and more than 2 million displaced. In his initial pretrial appearance, Kushayb dismissed the charges as “untrue,” signaling what would become a lengthy, drawn-out trial.Still, for some Darfuris, Kushayb’s arrest is a sign that justice, long-elusive, could be on the horizon.Related: Sudanese women seek justice one year after pro-democracy crackdown“I was very happy because Ali Kushayb surrender[ing] himself to ICC is an important step to satisfy the victims of genocide."Mutasim Ali, Darfuri activist living in Washington, DC“I was very happy because Ali Kushayb surrender[ing] himself to ICC is an important step to satisfy the victims of genocide,” said Mutasim Ali, a 33-year-old activist who recently graduated from George Washington University with a degree in comparative law. Ali was 16 years old when the conflict in Darfur broke out in 2003, disrupting his otherwise peaceful rural childhood.“When the war broke out, my family and I were separated because the village was destroyed by the Sudanese government — the militia.”His village, Daba Neira, lies in the mountainous Jebel Marra region, which for years was besieged by government-linked militias and “scorched-earth” attacks, according to Amnesty International.“They’re now living in displaced person camps in North Darfur State,” said Ali, who fled Sudan in 2007 after being arrested for criticizing the government.Sudan at a crossroadsKushayb’s arrest comes at a transformative moment in Sudan, where a transitional, civilian-led government is tasked with moving the country toward democracy after 30 years of dictatorship under Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted last year following months of massive protests. While the government has made social and political breakthroughs in a short time —  recovering billions in stolen assets, expanding religious freedoms and normalizing relations with the US — it has been slow to deliver justice to victims of the Bashir regime.Related: A year after revolution, Sudan celebrates but still faces squeeze of sanctionsThat’s especially true in Darfur, which has yet to feel the promise of transformation.“For me, the situation in Darfur is still in bad condition,” said Yahia Shogar, a doctor working in West Darfur, who is part of the rapid response team trying to curb the spread of the coronavirus.  As Sudan struggles to fight the coronavirus with limited resources, Kushayb’s arrest has renewed attention to the unique challenges in Darfur, where thousands remain in displacement camps supported mostly by international humanitarian aid.Insecurity and violence persist, propelled by intercommunal clashes and attacks on civilians by armed militias.“These conflicts have a direct correlation with health impact. Sometimes we have no way to reach areas far from us." Yahia Shogar, doctor, West Darfur, Sudan“These conflicts have a direct correlation with health impact. Sometimes, we have no way to reach areas far from us,” said Shogar, who notes there is also distrust toward the transitional government. Some members are linked to crimes in Darfur, notably Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagolo, deputy head of the sovereign council — and former Janjaweed leader.“People deny there’s coronavirus in Sudan or in Darfur,” said Shogar, who contracted COVID-19 himself.“People say that it’s a political issue,” he continued, explaining he and other medical professionals are trying to educate distrustful communities. Related: Coronavirus exposes Sudan's broken health care system“The change that is happening in [other parts of] Sudan is not seen in Darfur,” said Ali, the student.Sitting in his apartment in Washington, DC, where Black Lives Matter protests have erupted in recent weeks, Ali compares the experience of black Americans to what is happening at home.“They way they are being treated from slavery until this day. That’s exactly how the people of Darfur are being treated,” he explained. He worries that unless the problems in Darfur are addressed, the situation could become “explosive” — especially given the continued proliferation of arms in the region, and the anticipated drawdown of United Nations peacekeepers.Attempts at peaceSudan’s new government is now responsible for making peace with rebel movements on the country’s margins, including South Kordofan, Blue Nile — and Darfur.“Our main problem in Sudan is to address the root cause of the political problems. That is what we Darfuris demand."Nimir Abdelrahman, chief negotiator for the Sudan Liberation Movement Transitional Council, a Darfuri rebel group“Our main problem in Sudan is to address the root cause of the political problems. That is what we Darfuris demand,” said Nimir Abdelrahman, a chief negotiator for the Sudan Liberation Movement Transitional Council, a Darfuri rebel group. This week, Darfuri armed and unarmed rebel groups are negotiating with the Sudanese government in neighboring Juba, South Sudan, with hopes of reaching a peace deal by June 20, which will officially end the conflict in Darfur.“The security situation in Darfur has deteriorated, it is very bad,” Abdelrahman said. “We are trying for the Darfur [groups] and the government forces to establish a joint military command to help the people on the ground.”Other Darfuri demands include disarming armed militias responsible for attacking civilians and bringing justice to all those responsible for crimes in Darfur.“The government in Khartoum should hand over those wanted by the International Criminal Court,” said Abdelrahman. “For those who are not indicted — we agree to establish a Darfur criminal court.”There are four remaining Sudanese suspects wanted by the ICC for crimes in Darfur, including former President Bashir, who is currently in Kober prison in Khartoum.  It’s unclear whether those suspects will be extradited to the ICC, or tried jointly in Sudan.

Journalist, Dr. Atef Abdel Gawad discussed Sudan’s Transition to Civilian Rule: The Dream and Reality With a group of distinguished guests: Dr. Marwa Gibril, a physician, Darfuri, and Sudanese activist. Journalist Fatima Gazali in Alayar Sudanese newspaper and Alrakoba online newspaper. Mr. Mohamed Doudi, the former president of Umma Party In USA and Dr. Alrashid Mohammed Ibrahim, a professor of political science at the Global Relations Center (GRC ). The episode was broadcast: 6/9/2019 US Arab Radio can be heard on wnzk 690 AM, WDMV 700 AM, and WPAT 930 AM. Please visit: www.facebook.com/USArabRadio/ Web site : arabradio.us/ Twitter : twitter.com/USArabRadio Instagram : www.instagram.com/usarabradio/ Youtube : US Arab Radio

Discourse among American Jews has become more polarized in recent years. Issues ranging from the Iran deal, to Israel, to how to define and respond to anti-Semitism have divided our community. How can we manage these tensions and keep people together amid differences.Rabbi David Stern is Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, Texas. He joined Temple Emanu-El in June of 1989, serving as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi until his appointment as Senior Rabbi in August, 1996. Rabbi Stern is a social justice advocate on local, national and international issues. In 2005, he participated in a study mission to the Darfuri refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border. In the summer of 2013, he served as rabbi-in-residence for an American Jewish World Service Study Mission to Nicaragua. Locally, Rabbi Stern is on the Advisory Board of the Budd Center at SMU, which is committed to helping build strong communities with high-quality neighborhood schools in West Dallas.

The panel discusses the trends, drivers and causes of migration and displacement from Darfur as well as the conditions and experience of Darfuris in Europe.

When it comes to climate change and environmental change, “policies and laws can have a very productive contribution toward positive adaptation, or they can subvert that and constrain options,” says Jon Unruh, associate professor of human geography and international development at McGill University, in this week’s podcast. Access to resources can be governed by many different kinds of systems. From statutory law to customary rights, and religious tenets to rule of the gun, they can be “fluid, chaotic, or very much defined,” says Unruh. Understanding variations in resource governance is critical to understanding migration, in particular. As people exercise migration as an adaptation option, they change the way resources are used, he says. Strong examples of what works to peacefully facilitate such movement, and the freedom to experiment in response, are what local institutions need most to reduce the possibility of negative outcomes, such as conflict. In arguing the benefits of flexible, local institutional capacity, Unruh highlighted the conflict in Darfur, where the Sudanese central government did away with local land administration and made resource conflicts “unnegotiable.” Droughts over the last 40 years have led to major movements of people in western Sudan and eastern Chad. “What we've seen in the decades coming up to the war is that the institutional relationship between the nomads, the migrants, and those that received them was able to adapt, and absorb, and adjust rights to resources for both groups to accommodate the incoming migrants,” says Unruh. “By and large, the local institutions were able to handle this form of adaptation.” But the Khartoum government, seeking in part to weaken local independence movements, undermined these Darfuri institutions and tried to replace them with appointed officials. The response was a “clumsy, non-elastic, predictable” set of statutory laws “in an adaptation scenario where you needed quick thinking, elasticity in rights.” Even if the state has “very well-intentioned laws and institutions,” Unruh explains, “generally, they move too slow for what goes on on the ground.” Migrants and host communities are negotiating access to resources at the local level. Support for flexible, local-level innovation and experimentation is therefore more useful in preventing the worst results, like the violence that erupted in Darfur, than rigid top-down national policies. Jon Unruh spoke at a private event at the Wilson Center on August 31, 2015.

Janice Kamenir-Reznik is Co-founder and President of Jewish World Watch (JWW), an organization she co-founded with Rabbi Harold Schulweis to mobilize Americans to fight against genocides and mass atrocities, and to provide relief and support to survivors. Janice served as President of California Women Lawyers, President of the California Women's Law Center, and as trustee of the Los Angeles County Bar and trustee of the California State Bar's Trust Fund. Janice travels to the Darfuri refugee camps, and to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help JWW establish and fund various recovery and economic development projects in the eastern regions of the country. Naama Haviv, who holds an MA/ABD in Genocide Studies from Clark University, joined JWW's team as Assistant Director. Naama develops and directs JWW's policy objectives towards Sudan and Congo, manages JWW's strategic partnerships both in the US and in Sudan, Chad, and Congo, and their program development including youth activist training initiatives and domestic education and advocacy programs. As well as researching current world conflicts to assess the risk of genocide. Julie Bram is a full time community volunteer and activist. As a founding partner and past chair of the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund she has been blessed to support and work with many remarkable non-profit organizations. Her passion lies in using education and communication to effect positive change in the world. (Tikkun olam) Julie currently serves on several advisory committees and boards of directors for a wide variety of charitable causes.

Janice Kamenir-Reznik is Co-founder and President of Jewish World Watch (JWW), an organization she co-founded with Rabbi Harold Schulweis to mobilize Americans to fight against genocides and mass atrocities, and to provide relief and support to survivors. Janice served as President of California Women Lawyers, President of the California Women's Law Center, and as trustee of the Los Angeles County Bar and trustee of the California State Bar's Trust Fund. Janice travels to the Darfuri refugee camps, and to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help JWW establish and fund various recovery and economic development projects in the eastern regions of the country. Naama Haviv, who holds an MA/ABD in Genocide Studies from Clark University, joined JWW's team as Assistant Director. Naama develops and directs JWW's policy objectives towards Sudan and Congo, manages JWW's strategic partnerships both in the US and in Sudan, Chad, and Congo, and their program development including youth activist training initiatives and domestic education and advocacy programs. As well as researching current world conflicts to assess the risk of genocide. Julie Bram is a full time community volunteer and activist. As a founding partner and past chair of the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund she has been blessed to support and work with many remarkable non-profit organizations. Her passion lies in using education and communication to effect positive change in the world. (Tikkun olam) Julie currently serves on several advisory committees and boards of directors for a wide variety of charitable causes.

Join us for a conversation with Andree Sosler, Executive Director The Darfur Stoves Project. As we have discussed on previous shows, the situation in Darfur is a genocide happening "on our watch". The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrants for top ranking Sudanese officials, but millions of Darfur is continue to be affected and displaced. The two million displaced Darfuris currently living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps receive food aid and cooking oil from a variety of humanitarian aid organizations. However, they are still responsible for gathering firewood as fuel for cooking. Due to the aridity of the land and the size of the camps, wood is scarce and growing scarcer. With deforestation, women and young girls must walk further and further from the relative safety of the camps in search of wood. Today, Darfuri women must walk up to seven hours, three to five times per week, just to find a single tree. These searches are the main reason why Darfuri women and girls leave the relative safety of the camps for the open countryside, where they are vulnerable to violent attacks and sexual assault.The mission of the Darfur Stoves Project is to improve the safety and wellbeing of internally displaced persons in Darfur by providing fuel-efficient cookstoves. The Berkeley-Darfur Stove reduces the quantity of firewood women need to cook for their families by at least 50 percent. This allows Darfuri women to dramatically reduce the amount of time spent outside the camps collecting firewood. Executive Director of the Darfur Stoves Project, Andree Sosler, discusses her recent 3 week visit to Darfur, as well as the impact that her organization is having is mitigating the atrocities caused by the Darfur tragedy.

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