This is the first book to tell the story of the Jews of Lebanon in the twentieth century. It challenges the prevailing view that Jews everywhere in the Middle East were second-class citizens, and were persecuted after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Jews of Lebanon were just one of Lebanon's 23 minorities with the same rights and privileges, and subject to the same political tensions. The author discusses the Jewish presence in Lebanon under Ottoman Rule; Lebanese Jews under the French mandate; Lebanese Jewish identity after the establishment of the State of Israel; the increase of the community through Syrian refugees; the Jews' position in the first civil war; the beginning of their exodus; the virtual extinction of the Jewish community as a result of the prolonged second civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and finally the community's memory of their Lebanese past.

Kirsten E. Schulze is Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics. She has worked and published extensively on the Middle East, including Israel's Covert Diplomacy in Lebanon (1998), The Arab-Israeli Conflict (1999) and co-edited Ethnicity, Minorities and Diasporas (1996).