Regina Waldman
Contributing Writer and Human Rights Fighter
Gina Waldman is a survivor. Born Gina Malaka Bublil in Tripoli to a family that had lived in Libya for centuries, she was persecuted, nearly murdered and brutally expelled from her homeland in 1967. She is one of nearly a million Jews who were forced to flee their homes in Arab lands from 1948-1970. She eventually immigrated to the United States, where for the past 35 years she has dedicated herself to the cause of freedom and the defense of human rights.
Waldman has won the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award and testifying in front of the UN Human Rights Council . Gina has also testified before the US Congress Human Rights Caucus as an expert witness.
As Director of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jewry, Waldman was instrumental in winning freedom for thousands of Soviet Jews like Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky. Regina worked closely with Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights champion, Andrei Sakharov. Waldman also fought human rights abuses in Argentina and Chile, during Augusto Pincohet’s regime. In the 1990’s she worked to resettle Moslem refugees from Bosnia in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Together with Joseph Abdel Wahed, Waldman founded JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) in 2002 to bear witness to the suffering of other Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Her own personal story adds much needed perspective to any discussion of the Middle East.
