The Arab Lie Whose Time Has Come-Veteran of the 1948 War dissects the myth of Palestinian innocence
| April 21, | David Gutmann
Posted on Wednesday, April 21, by SJackson
An Israeli veteran of the 1948 War for Independence dissects the revisionist myth of Palestinian innocence
To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike.
It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like the others it will never go away. Nevertheless, many Jewish Peaceniks—both Israeli and American—have signed on to the Naqba narrative, and Jewish authors and intellectuals now number among its leading proponents. One such piece of Jewish “Naqba” P.R. is “The Roots of the Palestine Refugee Problem–Revisited” by the Israeli Leftist Benny Morris. In the book, Morris focuses particularly on Operation Hiram, the Israeli campaign undertaken to clear the Galilee of the foreign fighters who had infiltrated the Arab villages there. He claims that these villages were the sites of multiple massacres, expulsions and rapes committed by Jewish forces.
Morris has recently turned somewhat to the Right, in that he justifies the expulsions that he reports: in his current view, the infant Israeli State could not have survived unless it was purged of a hostile Arab population. But realistically, it matters not whether Morris is Left or Right, Hawk or Dove. Whatever his politics, the Palestinian propagandists will cherry pick what they need from his report to substantially bolster their Myth of Naqba and their radical demands for repatriation of all refugees and their descendants into the heart of Israel.
I was a witness to the Naqba times, and am compelled to challenge such Israel-bashing by the Palestinians and their Jewish allies. As a trainee with the Palmach and then with the regular Israeli forces during the Independence War, I had neither military skills nor fluency in Hebrew, and was probably more trouble to my units than I was worth. My real usefulness to Israel may only become evident 53 years later. Because of that youthful service, I can now—when the Palestinian myth is being legislated into hardened truth, even for Jews—bear an elder's witness against the Naqba lie.
Some facts I can swear to:
A. The Palestinians initiated the war that led to their Naqba. Troops from Tel-Aviv eventually conquered Jaffa, but it was Arab fighters in Jaffa who, from the towers of their mosques, first fired into Tel-Aviv, and turned the intercity border areas into a battleground.
B. The first refugees were not Arabs but Yemenite Jews, from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa No-Man's Land that Arab aggression had created. Unlike the Palestinians, theirs was only a temporary refugee status. Instead of packing them away and forgetting them in squalid refugee camps, their Ashkenazi compatriots took them into their own neighborhoods. For the most part the Yemenites camped out in Tel Aviv apartment lobbies, and used the cooking and sanitary facilities of the permanent residents. When Jaffa fell to Irgun soldiers, they went back home.
C. The Palestinians fled for many reasons and from many threats, both real and imaginary, and that thousands upon thousands fled when nobody pushed them. As an example, when my unit occupied the abandoned British police station at Sidn'a Ali in the Sharon Plain, British troops were still stationed in the vicinity, and we had to train and patrol with our few guns (antiquated or homemade) concealed. Nevertheless, the Arabs of Sidn'a Ali were long gone, way before we could have pushed them out, and while the Brits were still in place to protect them from us. Needless to say, in the absence of any Palestinian targets (save for some abandoned camels) we committed no rapes.
I don't know why the Sidn'a Ali people fled, but they did leave a caretaker in place, as a sign that they intended to return once those pesky Jews had been ethnically cleansed. They did not flee because they feared Jewish thugs, but because of a rational and reasonable calculus: the Jews will be exterminated; we will get out of the way while that messy and dangerous business goes forward, and we will return afterwards to reclaim our homes, and to inherit those nice Jewish properties as well.
They guessed wrong; and the Palestinians are still tortured by the residual shame of their flight. Their shame is so great because in their eyes running from Jews was like running from women; and because there were so many Sidn'a Alis. To relieve their shame they stridently and continually demand that their unsavory history be rewritten and reversed.
While I witnessed no Israeli atrocities in the coastal Sharon Plain, Ralph Lowenstein, an American volunteer in '48, and now a professor of Journalism at the University of Florida refutes Morris' claims that Jewish troops, engaged in Operation Hiram, committed massacres and ethnic cleansings in the Galilean Hills. Prof. Lowenstein was a young half-track driver in the 79th Battalion of the 7th Brigade, the formation that spearheaded Operation Hiram. Like myself, he refutes Morris' allegations of Jewish war crimes:
“I never saw anything like this, either while it was allegedly going on or after it had transpired. After the mixed Christian/Muslim town of Jish, the first place we attacked, I did see virtually every Arab village on a line between Safad and Kadesh on the Lebanese border during Operation Hiram, and the pattern was: villages occupied by Christian Arabs unharmed; Muslim villages deserted, long before any Israeli troops got there.
There were rumors at the time that a massacre had occurred in one village, and a week after we had returned from combat a directive in English and Hebrew was distributed to each army post mentioning such rumors and warning of the dire consequences to any enlisted person or officer who could be convicted of engaging in such incidents. There were no rumors of rape or ethnic cleansing, only of one isolated massacre committed in the heat of battle.”
Parenthetically, the Israeli appetite for rape and slaughter that Morris discovers was not matched or fueled in '48 by any racist or demonizing language—none of the “Slap the Jap” stuff that we Americans indulged in during WWII. In fact, I was surprised by the neutrality and impersonality of the terms used to describe the enemy: only “Aravim” (the Hebrew plural of “Arabs”), and the like. The same terse understatement is the Israeli norm today.
Any misdeeds committed by IDF troops during the War for Independence came against the backdrop of the Holocaustic acts and appetites of the Arabs themselves. We were only a few weeks into the first, irregular phase of the war when the slaughters began: the wholesale murder by their Arab fellow workers of some 40 Jewish workers in the Haifa refineries; the massacre of Hebrew university medical faculty and nurses on the road to Mt. Scopus; the killing of many captured Palmach fighters and kibbutzniks in the Etzion Bloc; the decimation of the truck convoys to Jerusalem. And after the killing, the real fun began. The Arab way of war is to quite explicitly “feminize” the enemy. And in '47-'48, the Aravim castrated and mutilated, in ways that I will not describe here, the fallen or captured Jewish soldiers. Incidentally, the “portraits” of their Jewish victims—both boys and girls—were afterwards peddled in Arab Jerusalem.
The above may read like “Huns Rape Nuns” propaganda, and I myself never did see a mutilated Jewish corpse. But I have seen photographs; and I can say that our Palmach officers—men given to understatement rather than hysteria—instructed us, when in action, to always save a bullet or a grenade for ourselves, so as not to fall alive into the hands of Arab irregulars. Capture was not an option. Prof. Lowenstein gives independent confirmation: “All of us knew at the time that if we foreign volunteers were captured, our lives would be worth little. Arab atrocities were expected, as well as committed.”
In short, barely three years after the cessation of the Holocaust, the Palestinian Arabs, led by Hitler's Holocaust consultant, Haj-Amin Al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, gleefully promised a wholesale genocide—not just population transfer, but genocide—and showed us, quite dramatically, that his followers had the capacity and the appetite to carry it out.
The Jews of Palestine responded as an outnumbered and outgunned people should answer: they “cleansed” the Arab communities that had become—or threatened to become—the instruments of the revived Holocaustic enterprise. Some examples: They drove out the occupants of Tireh, who had the bad habit of shooting up Jewish traffic on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway, and they drove out the occupants of Kastel and other villages that bloodied the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road. So as to open up the sea roads to the arms markets and refugee camps of Europe, they took the seaport of Haifa; to free Tel-Aviv from continual gunfire, they took Jaffa; to cut the Palestinians off from their Lebanese and Syrian armorers, they conducted operation Hiram and took the Galilee.
The second great context enfolding Israeli action was of course war itself. In war, the power of the individual conscience is conceded to the state, which requires killing as a moral duty, while the pleasure in killing is reserved for the individual soldier. The upshot: one can slaughter with a clear conscience. That is the human rather than the Jewish recipe for the routine massacres of war. We have seen this scenario before. Thus, as WWII progressed, the RAF wreaked a hell on German cities that far outweighed everything that the Luftwaffe had ever done to London, to Rotterdam, to Coventry, to Warsaw, and to Guernica combined. No complaints though from the Brit population, not even from the Left. No frenzied rallies demanding an end to the fire-bombing of Hamburg, Dresden or Berlin. And why not? Because the war and the practice of terror-bombing had been started by Hitler, and the Bloody Germans were only getting what was coming to them.
By the same logic, the firebombed and atomized Japanese cities were accepted in the U.S. as partial payment for Pearl Harbor. This same grim context also underwrites Israeli “war crimes”: Our Palestinian Cousins started the '48 war, and in so doing released the warlike appetites of a nation of survivors, a people with no place to run, who had repressed their rage for millennia, and had now earned full title to it. Again, Prof. Lowenstein: “Many of our troops were recently Displaced Persons, Holocaust survivors, who had little respect for the niceties of civilization, if not for life itself.”
It was only three years after the Holocaust, and we were still learning the full extent of the horror from the mouths of children coming to us from the DP camps of Europe, the prison camps of Cyprus, and the graves of countless Anne Franks in the Polish sky. Their voices mixed with the chatter of the Palestinians, as they eagerly detailed, with that innocent glee that they bring to the contemplation of slaughter, what they were going to do to this particular pack of Yids. And now, fifty-five years later, all the “noble souls”—the Quakers, the Unitarians, the Society of Friends, B'Tselem—are all so disappointed with the Israelis of '48. Why? Because, as a nation of victims, they didn't “show empathy,” they “didn't feel the Arab's pain.” Damn well right they didn't. The really strange thing is how relatively restrained the Jews actually were.
Finally then, it is not copping a plea to say that the Aravim, who unleashed the war dogs in the first place, bear the ultimate responsibility for the killing on both sides. To ignore these contextsof the Independence War, while only deploring Jewish “war crimes,” is to demonize the Israelis. Absent these imperious contexts, the Israeli killings stand alone. As unique crimes, they dominate the historic landscape. They join the other Blood Libels: the Jew as Christ Killer, the Jew as the baker of bloody matzos, the Jew of the Protocols of Zion (“Heeeere's Shylock! And he's armed!”). But when we restore the contexts of war, what in their absence stand out as exclusively Jewish horrors, new murders of Christ, are reduced in scope, to become part of the generic human landscape, which is in all its parts slippery with blood.
Any people that enters history in an active role will dirty its hands. But the dirtiest hands belong to those Great Souls whose pristine consciences will not allow them to fight even their own murderers. Let them look to their own morality, and not burden the embattled Israelis with their twisted pieties.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
How Arabs stole Jewish property in Arab countries and in Palestine-Israel - Draiman
How Arabs stole Jewish property
As Palestinians mark 'Nakba Day,' history shows Jews were persecuted expelled and dispossessed of all their assets too after escaping Arab countries between 1944-1969
Tani Goldstein Published: 05.15.11, 15:26 / Israel Business
Responding to arguments that million Jews
expelled from Arab countries has no bearing on the Arabs who left Palestine
YJ Draiman
The Palestinian people are marking their annual "Nakba Day" on Sunday, commemorating the escape and expulsion of the Palestinians from the State of Israel upon its establishment.
Give Us Money
Libyan Jews demand compensation / David Regev
Chairman of World Organization of Libyan Jews appeals to Berlusconi, Gaddafi asking for some of funds Tripoli is slated to receive from Rome in compensation for damages of colonialism
Full story
In addition to the uprooting, the Palestinians are protesting against the nationalization and robbery of the property they left behind, while they have been living in poverty in refugee camps.
But there are two sides to every coin. Between the years 1944 and 1964, some 900,000 Jews moved in the opposite direction, from Arab countries to Israel – and they were persecuted, expelled and dispossessed of nearly their entire property.
'Better life than in Eastern Europe'
Jews have been living in the Middle East since the Babylonian captivity and in North Africa since the Roman era. During the Arab occupation, the majority of world Jews lived in this area.
Since then, the center of the Jewish world moved the Eastern Europe due to immigration, and Jews' conversion to Islam in Arab countries and to Christianity in Europe. In 1940, there were some 16 million Jews in the world, and only 5% of them – 900,000 – lived in Arab countries, mostly in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq and Egypt.
Yemeni Jews' aliyah. Property looted
The Jews' situation in Arab countries varied as times changed and depending on the countries they lived in: In some places they integrated into society and were even part of the upper class, in other places they were subject to restrictions, and from time to time they suffered from riots and persecution.
In general, the Muslims treated the Jews not much better than in Europe and their economic situation was good at times.
"The average Jew lived not much better than the average Muslims, and in fact – a little better than the Jews in Eastern Europe" says Yaakov Hajaj, director of the Institute for the Research and Study of Libyan Jewry.
"They could work in whatever they wanted to. Most of them worked in certain fields, some of which were basically under their control: As tailors, shoemakers, goldsmiths, imprinters, spice merchants, grocery store owners, peddlers and even international traders."
"Most Jews and Christians worked in industries that the Muslims banned themselves from working in," says Dr. Zvi Yehuda, director of the Research Institute of Babylonian Jewry.
"The Muslims were strict about not engaging in loan with interest, which included any dealing with silver and gold, and most goldsmiths were Jews. Most seamstresses were Jewish, and so were most tailors later on. As opposed to Europe, the Muslims did not hate the Jews because they dealt with money, and even tolerated them for that.
'Jews took less of a bribe'
The Middle East and North Africa – excluding Iran and Morocco – became part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. The Ottoman regime, as opposed to the preceding Arab regime, absorbed Jews into its governmental organizations.
"Many government workers, judges and tax collectors were Jewish, way beyond their percentage in the population," notes Hajaj. "They were considered reliable people who took less of a bribe. A Jew could not afford to get into trouble for 40 dinars, for fear of harming the entire community."
A small part of the Jews, mainly in Yemen and Morocco, lived in villages. But most lived in their own neighborhoods in the cities, in average and comfortable houses.
"There was a 'street of Jews' or a 'Jewish quarter' in nearly every city, but it wasn't a ghetto," says Hajaj. "There was no wall and the Jews were there out of their own free will, in order to keep kosher and observe Shabbat and stop different vagabonds from coming in and harassing them.
"The typical family lived in a complex of several houses, a house for each brother, around an internal courtyard. It was completely different than the cabins of the Muslim peasants and the huts in Jewish towns in Europe."
In the 19th century, the Arab world was subject to colonization: Britain took over Egypt, France took over Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and Italy took over Libya.
Iraq, Syria and the Land of Israel remained under the Ottoman Empire, but it collapsed and was gradually taken over by Western powers, until its occupation in World War I. The situation changed in favor of the Jews.
"The Jews became mediators between Europe and the Arabs," says Hajaj. "They wandered in the world, got to know countries and languages, had ties in Europe, and everyone trusted them.
"They sold the Europeans cloths, threads and Arab agricultural produce, as well as exotic goods like ostrich feathers from Africa and imported clothes and industrial products from Europe. They gave the peasants advanced payments and made sure that they supplied the goods. Many became rich, particularly in cities off the Mediterranean Coast and in Iraq. Some got a European citizenship and adopted European customs."
How did the Muslims react?
"At first it was convenient. They trusted the Jews more than they trusted each other. Their trust collapsed in the 20th century, upon the creation of Arab patriotism and Zionism."
'Baghdad market closed on Shabbat'
The extent of the Jewish success varied from country to country. "People who visited Iraq in the 19th century wrote that the Jews control the economy," says Yehuda. "The markets were closed on Shabbat. Jews were part of the government. When professions like advocacy were created, Jews were prominent in them too.
"In Syria the Muslims were tougher and restricted the Jews, while in Kurdistan the economy was stuck on exchange trade, like in the Middle Ages: The Muslim gave the Jews knitting wool and the Jews gave them back clothes."
There were differences within the communities as well: There were poor people everywhere who needed charity organizations, alongside families like Daniel in Iraq and Arbiv, Halfon and Nahum in North Africa, that became regional "Rothschilds" and had capital, real estate and factories.
"In the East there were no billionaires like Baron Hirsch," Yehuda notes. "But whoever had 1,000 pounds and 10 houses was considered very rich. On the other hand, most of the goldsmiths lived from hand to mouth and in harsh competition with big companies, some of which belonged to rich Jews."
The Middle East is the cradle of science and education in the world. The first university in the world was opened in the 9th century in Qayrawan, Tunisia – and its first class had Jewish students too. However, the education revolution Europe underwent in the 18th century skipped Arab countries, including the Jews.
"In North Africa there were hardly any universities," says Hajaj. "In all of Libya there were 14 PhDs. But many of the Jews were self-educated and studied geography, languages and history while travelling the world.
"Iraq's Jews were exceptional: All young people there had a high school education and some even had university degrees."
'A Jew shouldn't control Muslims'
The Jews' situation began deteriorating with the Arab national awakening, before the State of Israel's establishment. "From a British mandate, Iraq turned into an autonomic state in 1932 and immediately began disinheriting the Jews," says Yehuda.
"They weren't accepted to schools and universities and were dismissed from jobs with all sorts of claims."
Who led the restrictions?
"The Arab nationalists and the militant Muslims. The establishment was not happy with the situation but was dragged into it, and most of the population was ambivalent: In day-to-day life they had friendly relations with the Jews, but when a Jew was appointed as a judge or government worker it bothered them, because according to their perception, a Jew is not supposed to control Muslims."
Upon the establishment of the State of Israel, the Arab world was flooded with violent riots, massacres and plunder against the Jews. Some of the Arab governments defended the Jews, while others – mainly in Iraq and Yemen – inflamed the riots and looting.
"The Iraqi government confiscated property, as if to compensate the Palestinian refugees," says Yehuda. "Government workers would arrive at a business and ask the Jewish owner how much he would like to 'donate' to the refugees. If he wouldn't – that was the end of the business. Most of the property reached people with ties to the government."
In 1951, the Iraqi government quietly agreed to let Jews immigrate to Israel, and almost all of them did. At the same time, it enacted a law stating that the entire Jewish property – houses, factories, goods, jewelry and bank accounts – would be nationalized.
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser enacted similar laws after the Lavon Affair and the Sinai war. Libya's Jews were expelled and their property was nationalized in the 1960s. "(Libya leader Muammar) Gaddafi promised to return everything within 30 years," notes Hajaj, "but at the moment he's busy with other stuff."
Syria, Tunisia and Algeria did not nationalize property, but the Jews were persecuted and fled those countries when they gained independence (1946, 1959 and 1962, respectively), and the Muslims looted the remaining property. That is what happened to the property of Yemeni Jews who made aliyah in Operation Magic Carpet as well.
"Some of Morocco's Jews 'got off easy': They immigrated with the money and property and 'only' left the homes," says Hajaj. "Jews from other countries immigrated with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. My father was one of Libya's biggest billionaires and immigrated with a suitcase weighing 20 kilos."
$4 or 200 billion? The amount of confiscated Jewish personal assets, businesses, homes and 120,000 sq. km. of property in Arab countries is valued today in the trillions of dollars.
Researchers and organizations are at odds over the scope of the lost property.
Economist Sidney Zabludoff, a former American government worker, estimated that the property totaled some $700 billion in the 1950s and reached some $990 billion in 2007. The Pensioner Affairs Ministry puts the sum at about 900 billion pounds. One organization says $990 billion and another says $500 billion in Iraq alone.
Will the Jews be compensated for the confiscated and looted property valued in the trillions of dollars? And it can, and it must, be deducted from the property Israel gained from the Arab-Palestinians offset by Jewish property taken from Jews in all of Palestine?
The scope of the Arab-Palestinian property is also a matter of controversy. Economist John Barncastle evaluated the Palestinian property the 1950s at some $450 million. Zabludoff said it stood at some $4 billion today. The Camp David peace talks discussed $20 billion, while Arab organizations spoke of some $200 billion.
The disagreement stems from the reevaluation method. The number of people who escaped on both sides was: About 530,000 Palestinians and about 990,000 Jews (excluding those who immigrated to France). Most of them lived in their own homes.
The Jews, in general, were much richer and possessed many assets in addition to the houses. But real estate is the main thing, and it is customary to add to the original value the rising prices in the places the refugees lived in. Israeli housing prices, as we all know, have gone up much more.
Israel earned a lot from the Jewish property looted in Europe (the amount collected to date as reparation for Jewish assets during the Holocaust is not even 10% of the total assets some of the reparations collected to date and used the funds to help Holocaust survivors, although insufficiently. But until recently, the State ignored the Jewish property in Arab countries which has a value in the trillions of dollars.
"Until recently, there was a lot of fear," says Yehuda. "During the peace talks, Egypt's Jews demanded that (then-Israeli Prime Minister) Menachem Begin include a clause requiring compensation, but he wouldn't listen. I think the government was afraid that the value of the Jewish assets would be so much greater that it would not have to pay the Arab-Palestinians and the Arabs would oppose it..
"They changed their mind when (former US President) Bill Clinton stated that an international fund would be established to compensate both sides. Since then, they are hoping that the arrangement won't be at their expense."
The property in Israel is worth more thanks to the Jews' knowledge and capital. Why should it increase the compensation to the Arab-Palestinians?
"These things are not determined according to logic. Here's something even more absurd: Rich Jews from Iraq bought lands in Israel in the 1930s and 1940s before immigrating. Whoever bought lands within the Green Line received them. But some bought lands in Judea and Samaria, and the Jordanians nationalized them, these lands must be returned to the Jews.
"After the Six-Day War, the Jews demanded their lands back and the military government said, 'We are acting in accordance to Jordanian law, and therefore they aren't yours.' But settlements of other Jews were established on those same lands."
Americans demanded compensation first
The United States recognized Jews' right for compensation from Arab countries in the 1990's. Former Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit stated in 2006 that Israel would demand compensation.
In 2010, the Knesset enacted the "law for compensating Jewish refugees from Arab countries," which obligates the government to demand compensation as part of any future peace negotiations.
How will Arab countries respond to the Israeli demand? In the past, London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted an Iraqi lawyer named Hasem Muhammad Ali as saying he supports compensation. But the Iraqi government, according to the newspaper, is against it, claiming that the Jews left out of their own free will and could get their property back if they returned.
The public discourse in Israel focuses on the distress of Oriental Jews. Most books and articles, speeches and protests dealt with the discrimination and injustice they suffered in Israel by the Ashkenazi establishment, and only few dealt with the robbery they suffered in their Arab-Muslim homelands.
"I think our situation would have been better had we remained in Libya," says Hajaj. "But I don't know if the only one to blame is Israel, which took care of our livelihood and provided education, or the countries which robbed us and sent us away stark naked."
Some 900,000 Jews of Arab countries and 100,000 immigrants from Turkey and Iran were met in Israel by 670,000 Jews who had already settled in, and some 700,000 Holocaust survivors who suffered greatly but received financial compensation and integrated into the Israeli economy.
All three populations have become richer since then, but the gaps between them continue to burden the State to this very day. Israel has regained its title as the center of the Jewish people, but most of the Jewish money has gone to the US, where secure and convenient Jewish life has prospered for the first time in thousands of years.
Jewish Naqba النكبة /Catastrophe (Videos)
Jewish Naqba النكبة /Catastrophe (Videos)
I would like to recommend the below videos, which gives us some history regarding the pogroms and other atrocities incurred by Jews residing in Muslim countries. Jewish people living in Muslim countries were never treated as equal, but as sub-humans, as “second-class citizens” under state-sponsored discrimination and actively persecuted by Islamic militants apart from the government.
Those Jews from New York, Los Angeles, and Montreal are not unfamiliar with Persian, Syrian, Moroccan, and even Yemenite Jewish culture and history. Yet, most others still appear to be rather ignorant of their existence, let alone their histories, which which has paralleled their own.
Some people tent to think that Jewish people in Muslim countries had an easy life, compare to those in Europe. Think again.
In the 1940s, close to a million Jews from Arab countries were expelled from lands in which they had lived for 3000 years. They lost billions of dollars in property and came penniless to Israel. While we hear so much about the "Palestinian" refugees, the plight of the Mizrahi Jews has all but been forgotten.
An estimated 850,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab/Muslim lands. All were absorbed.
The Jewish exodus from Arab lands refers to the 20th century expulsion or mass departure of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Islamic countries. The migration started in the late 19th century, but accelerated after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
About 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were either forced out or fled their homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s; 260,000 reached Israel in 1948-1951, 600,000 by 1972. The Jews of Egypt and Libya were expelled while those of Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and North Africa left as a result of a coordinated effort among Arab governments to create physical and political insecurity. Most were forced to abandon their property. By 2002 these Jews and their descendants constituted about 40% of Israel’s population. One of the main representative bodies of this group, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, (WOJAC) estimates that Jewish property abandoned in Arab countries would be valued today at more than $300 billion and Jewish-owned real-estate left behind in Arab lands at 100,000 square kilometers (four times the size of the State of Israel). The organization asserts that the Jewish exodus was the result of a deliberate policy decision taken by the Arab League.
To read more about the Jewish Naqba go here
“Why does the Torah start with the creation, instead of the first commandment given to the Jewish People? Because if the nations of the world ever accuse the Jews of stealing the Land of Israel, the Jews will be able to respond to the nations of the world that the entire world belongs to G-d, He created it and He choose to give the Land of Israel to the Jewish People.” -Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak (Rashi)
AMAZING PICTURES OF THE JEWISH NAQBA…….
AMAZING PICTURES OF THE JEWISH NAQBA…….
Thanks to Joe Settler at The Muqata for the following pics who has much more at his site. The Arabs were not the only ones (many Arabs opted for leaving at the behest of their leaders) who had to flee the fighting, Jews were forced to vacate E.Jerusalem in droves. This needs to be hammered on, the Arabs and their apologists have managed to cloud the issues surrounding refugees long enough. KGS
Jewish refugees leaving their area of J’lem in the wake of the fighting.
Jews fleeing through the Zion Gate
Jews preparing to evacuate their homes
The area after the Arabs got there
Remembering the ‘Farhud’
Remembering the ‘Farhud’
By ZVI GABAY
As more and more Arabs recognize that they are not the only victims of the Mideast conflict, the dialogue with Israel can take place on a more genuine basis.
On June 1, Iraqi Jews commemorated the 70th anniversary of the farhud – anti-Jewish riots that took place on Shavuot, 1941. In the riots, reminiscent of Krystallnacht in Germany, at least 137 Jews – men, women and children – were murdered, hundreds more were injured, and much Jewish property was looted. The memory of the riots remains fresh in the minds of Iraqi Jews.
The attacks occurred without any provocation. The Jews, who had lived in Arab lands for thousands of years, did not declare war on their hosts. They never fought against them, as the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine fought against Jewish settlements and afterward against the nascent Jewish state.
The world has heard a great deal about the injustice that happened to the Palestinians, under the code name nakba, but knows almost nothing about the wrongs committed against the Jews of Arab lands. What happened in the Arab countries was in effect an ethnic cleansing.
While the Palestinian nakba is marked every year with demonstrations and wide media coverage, the “Jewish nakba” merits little notice. This, despite the fact that the human and physical dimensions of the disaster were larger. The number of Jews forced out of their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs was about 856,000, while the Arabs who left Mandatory Palestine numbered about 650,000. The UN, in Resolution 302 adopted in December 1949, established UNRWA – an agency in charge of relief and education only; not of rehabilitation. This policy did not diminish the number of Palestinian refugees, which has reached 4.8 million (including two million who became Jordanian citizens).
ISRAEL, FOR unclear reasons, did not raise the tragedy of the Jews from Arab countries on its political and public agendas.
Only on February 22, 2010, was the issue placed on the Israeli agenda with the enactment of “The Law for Preservation of the Rights to Compensation of Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran,” which states that any negotiation for the achievement of peace in the Middle East must include compensation for said Jews.
The attacks against the Jews of Arab lands occurred even before the establishment of Israel. In Iraq, they began with discrimination in the economy, education and public life.
Afterward, Arab nationalism ignited the fires of rioting against the Jews, which came to a peak in the farhud of 1941. Similar tragedies happened to the Jews of Libya and Aden. In a wave of pogroms in Libya in November 1945, 133 Jews were killed and 400 wounded; synagogues, businesses and homes were looted and destroyed. In Aden, even though it was under British rule, 100 Jews were murdered in November 1947 and many more wounded; hundreds of homes were destroyed.
Similar pogroms occurred in Egypt, in Syria and the rest of the Arab countries, since they achieved independence during the 20th century.
The combination of xenophobic Sunni nationalism – which is intolerant of all others, including Shi’ites, Christians and Kurds – and anti-Semitism produced a powerful hatred of the Jews. This hatred was abetted by Nazis such as the German envoy to Baghdad, Dr. Fritz Grobba, and pseudo-religious leaders such as Haj Amin al-Husseini (who fled from Mandatory Palestine and found in Iraq a convenient venue for his anti-Jewish activities). The Jews were left with no choice but to flee from the Arab countries that they had helped to found and to bring into the modern era with their contributions to government, the economy, medicine, education, literature, poetry and music.
The threatening anti-Jewish climate that prevailed in every Arab land was accompanied by inflamed anti-Jewish declarations, even from the podium of the United Nations.
Eliyahu Nawi, a commentator on Israel’s Arabic-language radio station, testified that following the 1947 Partition Resolution at the UN, Arabic radio stations constantly broadcast the song “Halu a-Saif Ygul” – “Let the sword speak... to thin out the cousins [the Jews].”
Government harassment and popular attacks drove the Jews of the Arab world to migrate en masse, (mostly to Israel, where they were given citizenship and successfully integrated into society). In Egypt, a mass expulsion took place in the dead of night; the Jews were forced to leave their personal and communal property – including schools, ancient synagogues and cemeteries, prophets’ graves and hospitals. The Arab authorities confiscated the property and used it for their own needs.
There were certainly Muslims in the Arab countries who did not support these attacks, but their voices were not heard. The Jews were the scapegoats in internecine power struggles between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites, just as today Israel is at the center of the struggle between Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni states, with Turkey at the fore.
In recent years, a process of awakening can be discerned in the Arab world, especially among intellectuals, who recognize that it was not only the Palestinian Arabs who suffered a nakba; the Jews of the Arab world had their own catastrophe.
In Israel, a commemoration ceremony will held on June 6 at the Babylonian Jewish Center in Or Yehuda.
The writer is a former ambassador and deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry.
= = =
Despite the valiant efforts of Arab deniers, the story of the Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab League countries is becoming more and more widely known.
While the whole world knows of the 650,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees (some willingly, some not), few recognize the other side of the same conflict—where 900,000 Jews, living peacefully in Arab lands, were expelled through an Arab League states agreed-upon policy of legislation, oppression, persecution and thievery. Even Hitler never managed to make Germany as “Jew-free” as the Arab states have managed to make themselves—from 900,000 in 1948 to less than 10,000 in 2010.
Can any logical human being really believe the Arab claim that ALL 900,000 left because of “idealistic reasons”, leaving billions of (1948) dollars and hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land behind them with no compensation? Most of them went to Israel, a country that had just managed to survive a war intended to eradicate it, with an uncertain future and constantly under the threat of more wars?
If you can believe that, you’ll believe that I can sell you the Tower Bridge in London.
By ZVI GABAY
As more and more Arabs recognize that they are not the only victims of the Mideast conflict, the dialogue with Israel can take place on a more genuine basis.
On June 1, Iraqi Jews commemorated the 70th anniversary of the farhud – anti-Jewish riots that took place on Shavuot, 1941. In the riots, reminiscent of Krystallnacht in Germany, at least 137 Jews – men, women and children – were murdered, hundreds more were injured, and much Jewish property was looted. The memory of the riots remains fresh in the minds of Iraqi Jews.
The attacks occurred without any provocation. The Jews, who had lived in Arab lands for thousands of years, did not declare war on their hosts. They never fought against them, as the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine fought against Jewish settlements and afterward against the nascent Jewish state.
The world has heard a great deal about the injustice that happened to the Palestinians, under the code name nakba, but knows almost nothing about the wrongs committed against the Jews of Arab lands. What happened in the Arab countries was in effect an ethnic cleansing.
While the Palestinian nakba is marked every year with demonstrations and wide media coverage, the “Jewish nakba” merits little notice. This, despite the fact that the human and physical dimensions of the disaster were larger. The number of Jews forced out of their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs was about 856,000, while the Arabs who left Mandatory Palestine numbered about 650,000. The UN, in Resolution 302 adopted in December 1949, established UNRWA – an agency in charge of relief and education only; not of rehabilitation. This policy did not diminish the number of Palestinian refugees, which has reached 4.8 million (including two million who became Jordanian citizens).
ISRAEL, FOR unclear reasons, did not raise the tragedy of the Jews from Arab countries on its political and public agendas.
Only on February 22, 2010, was the issue placed on the Israeli agenda with the enactment of “The Law for Preservation of the Rights to Compensation of Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran,” which states that any negotiation for the achievement of peace in the Middle East must include compensation for said Jews.
The attacks against the Jews of Arab lands occurred even before the establishment of Israel. In Iraq, they began with discrimination in the economy, education and public life.
Afterward, Arab nationalism ignited the fires of rioting against the Jews, which came to a peak in the farhud of 1941. Similar tragedies happened to the Jews of Libya and Aden. In a wave of pogroms in Libya in November 1945, 133 Jews were killed and 400 wounded; synagogues, businesses and homes were looted and destroyed. In Aden, even though it was under British rule, 100 Jews were murdered in November 1947 and many more wounded; hundreds of homes were destroyed.
Similar pogroms occurred in Egypt, in Syria and the rest of the Arab countries, since they achieved independence during the 20th century.
The combination of xenophobic Sunni nationalism – which is intolerant of all others, including Shi’ites, Christians and Kurds – and anti-Semitism produced a powerful hatred of the Jews. This hatred was abetted by Nazis such as the German envoy to Baghdad, Dr. Fritz Grobba, and pseudo-religious leaders such as Haj Amin al-Husseini (who fled from Mandatory Palestine and found in Iraq a convenient venue for his anti-Jewish activities). The Jews were left with no choice but to flee from the Arab countries that they had helped to found and to bring into the modern era with their contributions to government, the economy, medicine, education, literature, poetry and music.
The threatening anti-Jewish climate that prevailed in every Arab land was accompanied by inflamed anti-Jewish declarations, even from the podium of the United Nations.
Eliyahu Nawi, a commentator on Israel’s Arabic-language radio station, testified that following the 1947 Partition Resolution at the UN, Arabic radio stations constantly broadcast the song “Halu a-Saif Ygul” – “Let the sword speak... to thin out the cousins [the Jews].”
Government harassment and popular attacks drove the Jews of the Arab world to migrate en masse, (mostly to Israel, where they were given citizenship and successfully integrated into society). In Egypt, a mass expulsion took place in the dead of night; the Jews were forced to leave their personal and communal property – including schools, ancient synagogues and cemeteries, prophets’ graves and hospitals. The Arab authorities confiscated the property and used it for their own needs.
There were certainly Muslims in the Arab countries who did not support these attacks, but their voices were not heard. The Jews were the scapegoats in internecine power struggles between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites, just as today Israel is at the center of the struggle between Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni states, with Turkey at the fore.
In recent years, a process of awakening can be discerned in the Arab world, especially among intellectuals, who recognize that it was not only the Palestinian Arabs who suffered a nakba; the Jews of the Arab world had their own catastrophe.
Arab leaders – Palestinians and others – would do well to stop parroting the slogan “the right of return” and deluding their people, because there is no turning back time.As more and more Arabs recognize that they are not the only victims of the Middle East conflict, the dialogue with Israel can take place on a more genuine basis of justice.
In Israel, a commemoration ceremony will held on June 6 at the Babylonian Jewish Center in Or Yehuda.
The writer is a former ambassador and deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry.
= = =
Despite the valiant efforts of Arab deniers, the story of the Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab League countries is becoming more and more widely known.
While the whole world knows of the 650,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees (some willingly, some not), few recognize the other side of the same conflict—where 900,000 Jews, living peacefully in Arab lands, were expelled through an Arab League states agreed-upon policy of legislation, oppression, persecution and thievery. Even Hitler never managed to make Germany as “Jew-free” as the Arab states have managed to make themselves—from 900,000 in 1948 to less than 10,000 in 2010.
Can any logical human being really believe the Arab claim that ALL 900,000 left because of “idealistic reasons”, leaving billions of (1948) dollars and hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land behind them with no compensation? Most of them went to Israel, a country that had just managed to survive a war intended to eradicate it, with an uncertain future and constantly under the threat of more wars?
If you can believe that, you’ll believe that I can sell you the Tower Bridge in London.
THE LAST JEWS OF LIBYA
In the presence of the film maker Vivienne Roumani-Denn
As a teenager in Jerusalem many decades ago, our favourite social game was called "The Elephant and the Jewish Question" the essence of the game was to link any word one might suggest with a Jewish connection even if that was totally tenuous. It was a way of entertainment yet now when I look back at it, I believe that in our psychological makeup we carry the responsibility not to look upon ourselves as individuals but as far as the Jewish collective and care about it. "Kol Yisrael Arevim ze Laze" the dictum which reminds us daily of our collective responsibility to our brethren has become a second nature for us (and was incidentally the official theme of this year's Yom Ha-Atzmaout. This when something dramatic or worrying happens somewhere in the world our first instinct is to find out what actually happens or to the Jews in that place - after all we are members of the same extended family. When all our eyes are turned to Libya and to Khadaffi , his sons and grandchildren we wish to know what happened to the Jews in Libya.
An interesting interview was given about the fate and the history of the Jews of Libya by Dr Joseph Maimon, an electrical engineer who was thrown out of Libya in 67 at the breakout of the 6 days War.
The humiliation of the Arab shameful defeat in that war resulted in pogroms: Jewish shops in the central square in Tripoli were burnt. Jews were afraid to leave their houses knowing that they would be locked and attacked by their neighbours. They could not even go to buy bread or milk. In the 42 days that they were locked in their houses, they were often helped by Italians who were still living in Libya. The same Arabs who were colleagues at work until 67 became foes. Libya announced that they would create camps to gather Jews in then and provide them protection. The first families which left for the camp, one of which families was the Luzon family were murdered as soon as they arrived at the camp. Libya wanted to get rid of their Jews. England and France refused to give their refuge but Italy accepted them. It was relatively easy to integrate in Italy as they spoke Italian.
Every Jew who was allowed to leave could take with them one suitcase of 20kg and the sum of £20. In Italy they were put into refuge camps. All their possessions remained in Libya: shops, factories, property. It amounted to the fortune.
When this issue was raised at one point Khadaffi himself declared that he would compensate those who left behind all that they possessed in his country and even signed a .... Since then nothing of course happened. When Khadaffi visited Italy, Libyan Jews approached him to remind him of this undertaking. Israeli government did not do anything in the matter and there is of course the question of lack of meticulous documentation.
Now, that Palestinians are coming to Israel with demands of compensation for their lost property - this is the right time for the Israeli government in any negations of the kind to raise the topic of Jews from Libya and other Arab countries like Iraq who have left all their houses and fortunes in the countries where their Jewish ancestors lived at time thousands of years.
The film "The Last Jews of Libya" is the last document of a community which is no longer there. In all the news about Libya, it is forgotten that a thriving and ancient community of 36,000 Jews lived there at the end of World War II. Not a single Jew lives there today.
The Last Jews of Libya documents the final decades of the community through the lives of the Roumani family. A tale of war, cultural dislocation, and one Libyan family's perseverance, this 50-minute film traces the story of the Roumanis of Benghazi from Turkish Ottoman rule, through the age of Mussolini and Hitler, to the final destruction and dispersal of Libya's Jews in the face of Arab nationalism.
In the near future when the world's eye is turned to the question of Palestinian refugees, let us take this opportunity and remind ourselves and others about the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who were all led to normal lives by the state of Israel.
As a teenager in Jerusalem many decades ago, our favourite social game was called "The Elephant and the Jewish Question" the essence of the game was to link any word one might suggest with a Jewish connection even if that was totally tenuous. It was a way of entertainment yet now when I look back at it, I believe that in our psychological makeup we carry the responsibility not to look upon ourselves as individuals but as far as the Jewish collective and care about it. "Kol Yisrael Arevim ze Laze" the dictum which reminds us daily of our collective responsibility to our brethren has become a second nature for us (and was incidentally the official theme of this year's Yom Ha-Atzmaout. This when something dramatic or worrying happens somewhere in the world our first instinct is to find out what actually happens or to the Jews in that place - after all we are members of the same extended family. When all our eyes are turned to Libya and to Khadaffi , his sons and grandchildren we wish to know what happened to the Jews in Libya.
An interesting interview was given about the fate and the history of the Jews of Libya by Dr Joseph Maimon, an electrical engineer who was thrown out of Libya in 67 at the breakout of the 6 days War.
The humiliation of the Arab shameful defeat in that war resulted in pogroms: Jewish shops in the central square in Tripoli were burnt. Jews were afraid to leave their houses knowing that they would be locked and attacked by their neighbours. They could not even go to buy bread or milk. In the 42 days that they were locked in their houses, they were often helped by Italians who were still living in Libya. The same Arabs who were colleagues at work until 67 became foes. Libya announced that they would create camps to gather Jews in then and provide them protection. The first families which left for the camp, one of which families was the Luzon family were murdered as soon as they arrived at the camp. Libya wanted to get rid of their Jews. England and France refused to give their refuge but Italy accepted them. It was relatively easy to integrate in Italy as they spoke Italian.
Every Jew who was allowed to leave could take with them one suitcase of 20kg and the sum of £20. In Italy they were put into refuge camps. All their possessions remained in Libya: shops, factories, property. It amounted to the fortune.
When this issue was raised at one point Khadaffi himself declared that he would compensate those who left behind all that they possessed in his country and even signed a .... Since then nothing of course happened. When Khadaffi visited Italy, Libyan Jews approached him to remind him of this undertaking. Israeli government did not do anything in the matter and there is of course the question of lack of meticulous documentation.
Now, that Palestinians are coming to Israel with demands of compensation for their lost property - this is the right time for the Israeli government in any negations of the kind to raise the topic of Jews from Libya and other Arab countries like Iraq who have left all their houses and fortunes in the countries where their Jewish ancestors lived at time thousands of years.
The film "The Last Jews of Libya" is the last document of a community which is no longer there. In all the news about Libya, it is forgotten that a thriving and ancient community of 36,000 Jews lived there at the end of World War II. Not a single Jew lives there today.
The Last Jews of Libya documents the final decades of the community through the lives of the Roumani family. A tale of war, cultural dislocation, and one Libyan family's perseverance, this 50-minute film traces the story of the Roumanis of Benghazi from Turkish Ottoman rule, through the age of Mussolini and Hitler, to the final destruction and dispersal of Libya's Jews in the face of Arab nationalism.
In the near future when the world's eye is turned to the question of Palestinian refugees, let us take this opportunity and remind ourselves and others about the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who were all led to normal lives by the state of Israel.
Recalling the Jewish Nakba in the 'Middle East', W2 - Draiman
Recalling the Jewish Nakba in the 'Middle East', W2
(Top) Some 80 people heard the harrowing stories of refugees from Egypt, Libya and Iraq. (Middle) Tom Gross and Michelle Huberman. (Bottom) Refugee from Iraq Nadia Nathan holds the award presented on Harif's behalf by Tom Gross to Rosemond Nissan for her work with refugees. (Photos: Gili and Niran)
If they want Islamic banking, crave Lebanese mezze at the dozens of restaurants and kebab houses, or hanker for a hookah pipe, the cognoscenti head for the Edgware Road, W2, in London. Here the hijab-clad women and Arabic signage make you feel, for all the world, that you are in the Middle East.
And so it was a trifle daunting - but also appropriate - that Sunday's event concerning the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, Harif's The Jewish Nakba:remembering Jewish refugees from Arab countries, should have been held in the heart of London's Levant.
The police, however, were taking no chances. Guests had to brave a ring of steely officers on entry to the hotel, going through airport-style security so tight that some bona fide latecomers were turned away. The organisers were not allowed to advertise their meeting lest the expression Jewish Nakba appearing on a hotel screen might incite some hothead with a kebab skewer to go on the rampage.
The date chosen was deliberate: 15 May was Nakba Day for the Palestinians, but it was also an opportunity to tell the world about a second Nakba - the mass displacement of almost a million Jews from the Arab world.
Before an audience of 80 people, Jewish refugees told their harrowing stories. Colette Littman was forced to flee Egypt in 1956 after days of listening to the mob screaming Ytbah al yahud in the streets of Cairo below her apartment.The family's cook Omar was found sharpening a kitchen knife: what was he doing? she asked him. 'Getting ready to kill the Jews', came the reply.
Colette left with only the clothes she was wearing and her suitcase was ransacked at the airport. Not only did Egyptian Jews face an uncertain future in exile, but they underwent the emotional trauma of seeing their communities destroyed and their families scattered to the ends of the earth.
Elia Meghnagi left Benghazi in Libya in 1958 to study abroad. His early memories are of brawls between Arab and Jewish youths. As a stateless student in England, he was forced to support himself. Later, he arranged for his family to join him, but they had to leave all their property and belongings behind. They quietly slipped out, leaving the table set as if for a meal so as not to arouse the neighbours' suspicions. Back in England, visiting the Libyan embassy in order to regularise his status, Elia narrowly escaped being bundled into a plane and forcibly returned to Libya.
Edwin Shuker's family had lived in Mesopotamia - now Iraq - for 2,700 years. One of five thousand Jews still left in the country after the mass exodus of 1950 -51, Edwin witnessed the noose tightening around the community's necks in the sixties, when Jews had to carry yellow identity papers. Then came the horrific hangings of 1969, when a mob half a million strong picknicked under the corpses of nine innocent Jews suspended from the gallows in the main square. Edwin's family had to leave like thieves in the night, abandoning 2,700 years of history behind them.
Dr Saul Zadka, academic, author and journalist, who described himself as a 'refugee at heart', gave an incisive political analysis of the refugee issue. The two cases were quite different. Some 100,000 Palestinian 'refugees' belonging to well-to-do families left the country a year earlier with their money and belongings with every intention of returning when the Jews had been crushed. A million Arabs, many of them hostile to Israel, lived as full citizens with more rights than any of their fellow countrymen in Arab states. Jews in Arab lands were loyal citizens, yet were rewarded with murderous riots in Iraq, Libya and Aden before the creation of Israel. It was a hopeful development that the US Congress had passed a resolution in 2008 demanding parity between Jewish and Palestinian refugees, but the Israeli government was still doing too little, too late. Dr Zadka himself distributed a statement to the audience demanding that Jewish refugee rights be recognised and compensation for property many times more valuable than Palestinian losses, as the Jews were big city dwellers while the Palestinians were largely poor farmers who supported the invading armies.
Following a showing of the 15-minute short version of the film 'Forgotten Refugees', the international relations expert Tom Gross said that the Jewish refugee issue was in many ways the single most important issue on the Middle East agenda. " In theory Borders can be agreed and Jerusalem can be divided, but there is no answer to appeasing the feelings and demands of Palestinians and their supporters regarding the so-called 'right of return' - apart from making them aware of the suffering and the loss of the refugees of the Jewish Nakba, " he said. Yet few knew about it - and he seriously doubted if Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague had even heard of it. As far as Israel advocacy was concerned, no session at the 'We believe in Israel' conference taking place that day dealt with the topic. As for the press and media, they were mesmerised with the Palestinian Nakba to the exclusion of other news and other refugees.
On behalf of Harif, Tom Gross presented an award to Mrs Rosemond Nissan, who had devoted 33 years to helping refugees from the Middle East at World Jewish Relief. Michelle Huberman spoke of what tools could be used to promote Jewish refugees: she unveiled Harif's new Mezuzah campaign, recalling the stolen Jewish homes in Arab lands - every activist's must-have accessory.
As they stepped back out on to the Edgware Road, the ex-refugees in the audience went away fired up with renewed enthusiasm to tell their stories. Indignant Israel advocates prepared to vent their outrage at this neglected issue in letters to the editor - and the hungry simply went off in search of a hummus and pitta in London's 'Middle East'.
If they want Islamic banking, crave Lebanese mezze at the dozens of restaurants and kebab houses, or hanker for a hookah pipe, the cognoscenti head for the Edgware Road, W2, in London. Here the hijab-clad women and Arabic signage make you feel, for all the world, that you are in the Middle East.
And so it was a trifle daunting - but also appropriate - that Sunday's event concerning the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, Harif's The Jewish Nakba:remembering Jewish refugees from Arab countries, should have been held in the heart of London's Levant.
The police, however, were taking no chances. Guests had to brave a ring of steely officers on entry to the hotel, going through airport-style security so tight that some bona fide latecomers were turned away. The organisers were not allowed to advertise their meeting lest the expression Jewish Nakba appearing on a hotel screen might incite some hothead with a kebab skewer to go on the rampage.
The date chosen was deliberate: 15 May was Nakba Day for the Palestinians, but it was also an opportunity to tell the world about a second Nakba - the mass displacement of almost a million Jews from the Arab world.
Before an audience of 80 people, Jewish refugees told their harrowing stories. Colette Littman was forced to flee Egypt in 1956 after days of listening to the mob screaming Ytbah al yahud in the streets of Cairo below her apartment.The family's cook Omar was found sharpening a kitchen knife: what was he doing? she asked him. 'Getting ready to kill the Jews', came the reply.
Colette left with only the clothes she was wearing and her suitcase was ransacked at the airport. Not only did Egyptian Jews face an uncertain future in exile, but they underwent the emotional trauma of seeing their communities destroyed and their families scattered to the ends of the earth.
Elia Meghnagi left Benghazi in Libya in 1958 to study abroad. His early memories are of brawls between Arab and Jewish youths. As a stateless student in England, he was forced to support himself. Later, he arranged for his family to join him, but they had to leave all their property and belongings behind. They quietly slipped out, leaving the table set as if for a meal so as not to arouse the neighbours' suspicions. Back in England, visiting the Libyan embassy in order to regularise his status, Elia narrowly escaped being bundled into a plane and forcibly returned to Libya.
Edwin Shuker's family had lived in Mesopotamia - now Iraq - for 2,700 years. One of five thousand Jews still left in the country after the mass exodus of 1950 -51, Edwin witnessed the noose tightening around the community's necks in the sixties, when Jews had to carry yellow identity papers. Then came the horrific hangings of 1969, when a mob half a million strong picknicked under the corpses of nine innocent Jews suspended from the gallows in the main square. Edwin's family had to leave like thieves in the night, abandoning 2,700 years of history behind them.
Dr Saul Zadka, academic, author and journalist, who described himself as a 'refugee at heart', gave an incisive political analysis of the refugee issue. The two cases were quite different. Some 100,000 Palestinian 'refugees' belonging to well-to-do families left the country a year earlier with their money and belongings with every intention of returning when the Jews had been crushed. A million Arabs, many of them hostile to Israel, lived as full citizens with more rights than any of their fellow countrymen in Arab states. Jews in Arab lands were loyal citizens, yet were rewarded with murderous riots in Iraq, Libya and Aden before the creation of Israel. It was a hopeful development that the US Congress had passed a resolution in 2008 demanding parity between Jewish and Palestinian refugees, but the Israeli government was still doing too little, too late. Dr Zadka himself distributed a statement to the audience demanding that Jewish refugee rights be recognised and compensation for property many times more valuable than Palestinian losses, as the Jews were big city dwellers while the Palestinians were largely poor farmers who supported the invading armies.
Following a showing of the 15-minute short version of the film 'Forgotten Refugees', the international relations expert Tom Gross said that the Jewish refugee issue was in many ways the single most important issue on the Middle East agenda. " In theory Borders can be agreed and Jerusalem can be divided, but there is no answer to appeasing the feelings and demands of Palestinians and their supporters regarding the so-called 'right of return' - apart from making them aware of the suffering and the loss of the refugees of the Jewish Nakba, " he said. Yet few knew about it - and he seriously doubted if Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague had even heard of it. As far as Israel advocacy was concerned, no session at the 'We believe in Israel' conference taking place that day dealt with the topic. As for the press and media, they were mesmerised with the Palestinian Nakba to the exclusion of other news and other refugees.
On behalf of Harif, Tom Gross presented an award to Mrs Rosemond Nissan, who had devoted 33 years to helping refugees from the Middle East at World Jewish Relief. Michelle Huberman spoke of what tools could be used to promote Jewish refugees: she unveiled Harif's new Mezuzah campaign, recalling the stolen Jewish homes in Arab lands - every activist's must-have accessory.
As they stepped back out on to the Edgware Road, the ex-refugees in the audience went away fired up with renewed enthusiasm to tell their stories. Indignant Israel advocates prepared to vent their outrage at this neglected issue in letters to the editor - and the hungry simply went off in search of a hummus and pitta in London's 'Middle East'.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries:
Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries:
INTRODUCTION
When the issue of refugees is raised within the context of the Middle East, people invariably refer to Palestinian refugees, virtually never to Jews displaced from Arab countries.
In reality, two major population movements occurred as a result of over a half century of turmoil in the Middle East. Securing rights for these former Jewish refugees has never been adequately addressed by the international community. For any peace process to be credible and enduring, it must address the rights of all Middle East refugees, including Jewish and other minority populations that were displaced from Arab countries.
Historically, Jews and Jewish communities have existed in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region for more than 2,500 years. Jews in substantial numbers resided in what are to-day Arab countries over 1,000 years before the advent of Islam. Following the Moslem conquest of the region, for centuries, while relegated to second-class status, Jews were nonetheless permitted limited religious, educational, professional, and business opportunities.
It is important to note that the treatment of Jews by Arab leaders and Islamic populations varied greatly from country to country. By way of example, in some countries, Jews were forbidden to leave (e.g. Syria); in others, many Jews were expelled (e.g. Egypt) or displaced en masse (e.g. Iraq); while other Jewish communities lived in relative peace under the protection of Muslim rulers (e.g. Tunisia, Morocco).
When Arab countries gained independence, followed by the rise in Arab nationalism, state-sanctioned measures, coupled often with violence and repression, made remaining in the land of their birth an untenable option for Jews.
In 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries worsened dramatically as many Arab countries declared war, or backed the war against the newly founded State of Israel. Jews were either uprooted from their countries of longtime residence or became subjugated, political hostages of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In virtually all cases, as Jews left the country, individual and communal properties were confiscated without compensation.
Since 1948, over 850,000 Jews have left their birthplaces and their homes in some 10 Arab countries. To-day, fewer than 7,000 Jews remain in these same countries.
The fact that Jews displaced from Arab countries were indeed bone fide refugees, under international law, is beyond question.
• On two separate occasions the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
ruled that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were indeed ‘bona fide’ refugees who “fall under the mandate of my (UNHCR) office”.1
1 Mr. Auguste Lindt, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Report of the UNREF Executive Committee, Fourth Session – Geneva 29 January to 4 February, 1957; and Dr. E. Jahn, Office of the UN High Commissioner, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Document No. 7/2/3/Libya, July 6, 1967.
3
• In all relevant international bilateral or multilateral agreements, (i.e., UN Resolution 242, The Road Map, The Madrid Conference, etc.), the reference to “refugees” is generic, allowing for the recognition and inclusion of all Middle East refugees - Jews, Christians, and other minorities.
This Legal Report is intended to document, and assert, the rights of Jews displaced from Arab countries. Justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries must assume its rightful place on the international political agenda, as a matter of law and equity.
It is important to underscore that:
1) The legitimate call to secure rights and redress for Jews displaced from Arab countries is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees. In any Middle East peace proposals, Palestinian refugees will be up for discussion. The history and truth about the plight of former Jewish refugees from Arab countries must be also be acknowledged and returned to the narrative of the Middle East from which it has been expunged;
2) This Report should not be misconstrued as ‘anti-Arab’. This Report provides an accurate historical narrative about the plight and flight of Jews from Arab countries that has never been recognized by the international community nor acknowledged by Arab countries. Compelling evidence supports the call for justice to redress the victimization of Jews who lived in Arab countries and the mass violations of human rights that they were victims of; and
3) This initiative is not about money, nor about launching legal proceedings to seek compensation. This Report provides legal facts and evidence to assist all parties in any future negotiations on rights and redress for all Middle East refugees. In the absence of truth and justice, there can be no reconciliation, without which there can be no just, lasting peace between and among all peoples of the region.
The first injustice was the mass violations of rights of Jews in Arab countries. To-day, we must not allow a second injustice – for the international community to recognize rights for one victim population - Palestinian refugees - without recognizing equal rights for other victims of that very same Middle East conflict - former Jewish, Christian and other refugees from Arab countries.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A) Why Now?
Why has justice for Jewish refugees not only been delayed, but why has it been denied all these years?
Why has the issue been absent, not only from the international justice agenda, but why has it also been absent all these years from the Middle East peace agenda?
Why is it that the U.N. is preparing, yet again, to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People – on the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 – but will ignore, yet again, the plight of Jewish refugees on that commemorative occasion?
Let there be no doubt about it: where there is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there is no truth, there will be no justice; where there is no justice, there will be no reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there will be no peace.
There are a number of compelling, indeed urgent, moral and juridical considerations whose convergence warrants the publication of this Report.
First, there is the importance of rectifying the distorted historical narrative of Middle East refugees, and redressing the painful and pernicious delay and denial of justice for Jewish refugees these past sixty years. In particular, Jewish refugees from Arab countries must be restored to the Middle East narrative from which they have been expunged and eclipsed.
Second, there is the importance of the right to memory and the duty of remembrance of Jewish refugees; the importance for the refugees themselves of bearing witness; and the importance of hearing and documenting this witness testimony.
Third, there is the need to lay bare the truth, to counter the Middle East revisionism and distortion, to expose the cover-up of the historical narrative; and to combat the corruption of truth that inhibits understanding and prevents validation of a victim population, their history, their experience, and their pain.
Fourth, this Report not only details this pattern of state-sanctioned repression of Jews throughout Arab countries, but uncovers, for the first time, evidence of an international criminal conspiracy by the League of Arab States to persecute its own Jewish populations, as set forth more fully in Chapter 2 of this report.
Fifth, there are important developments in international human rights and humanitarian law, where more has happened in the last 15 years than in the previous sixty, which now underpin a right of redress for victim populations, and which apply specifically to the case of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Sixth, there is now a panoply of remedies to implement the right of redress in international law. These are not limited to compensation or indemnification of a victim population, but include such components as the right of memory, the duty of remembrance, the search for truth, access to justice, state-responsibility for wrongs inflicted, and the like.
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Seventh, the whole question of refugees – and refugee claims – has now emerged at the forefront of the peace process, be it as a subject matter of the bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, or as a subject of the forthcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, or as in every narrative of discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian and Middle East peace process. Yet in each and all instances, the reference is only to Palestinian refugees, thereby cleansing Jewish refugees from the Middle East peace process narrative.
Eighth, there is the particular pernicious and prejudicial role of the United Nations, which has systemically excluded the narrative of Jewish refugees from Arab countries from any U.N. narrative on the Middle East, either by exclusively identifying only Palestinian refugees as the sole victim population of the Middle East conflict, or by asserting only Palestinian rights of redress while ignoring those of Jewish refugees.
International law now obliges us to recognize and respect the narrative of victims of human rights violations, and therefore also obliges us to respect justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their case for rights and redress. Only in this fashion can there be movement from remembrance to truth, from truth to justice, from justice to reconciliation, and from reconciliation to peace - between and among all peoples and states in the region.
B) The Historical Narrative
Historically, Jews and Jewish communities have existed in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region for more than 2,500 years.
Fully one thousand years before the advent of Islam, Jews in substantial numbers resided in what are to-day Arab countries. Following the Moslem conquest of the region, for centuries under Islamic rule, Jews were considered second class citizens but were nonetheless permitted limited religious, educational, professional, and business opportunities.
Upon the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically as virtually all Arab countries declared war, or backed the war against Israel. This rejection by the Arab world of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland was the event that triggered a dramatic surge in a longstanding, pattern of abuse and state-legislated discrimination initiated by Arab regimes and their peoples to make life for Jews in Arab countries simply untenable. Jews were either uprooted from their countries of residence or became subjugated, political hostages of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Little is heard about these Jewish refugees because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, some two–thirds were resettled in Israel at great expense – others emigrated elsewhere – all without any compensation provided by the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.
Securing rights and redress for Jews displaced from Arab countries is an issue that has not yet been adequately addressed by the international community. In fact, there were more former Jewish refugees uprooted from Arab countries (over 850,000) than there were Palestinians (UN estimate: 726,000) who became refugees as a result of the 1948 war when numerous Arab nations attacked the newly established State of Israel.
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C) The Mass Violations of Human Rights
The uprooting of ancient Jewish communities from some 10 Muslim countries did not occur by happenstance. State-sanctioned repressive measures, coupled often with violence and repression, precipitated a mass displacement of Jews and caused the Jewish refugee problem in the Middle East. There is evidence that points to a shared pattern of conduct amongst a number of Arab regimes, that appear intended to coerce Jews to leave and go elsewhere, or to retain them as virtual political hostages. These are evidenced from: (a) statements made by delegates of Arab countries at the U.N. during the debate on the partition resolution representing a pattern of ominously similar threats made against Jews in Arab countries; (b) Recently discovered Draft Law of the Political Committee of the Arab League detailing a coordinated strategy of repressive measures against Jews; (c) newspaper reports from that period; and (d) strikingly similar legislation and discriminatory decrees, enacted by numerous Arab governments, that violated the fundamental rights and freedoms of Jews resident in Arab countries.
From the sheer volume of such state-sanctioned discriminatory measures, replicated in so many Arab countries and instituted in such a parallel fashion, one is drawn to the conclusion that such evidence suggests a common pattern of repressive measures – indeed collusion - against Jews by Arab governments.
The Report contains country reports that describe these unmistakable trends. The situations in Egypt, Iraq and Libya are described in greater detail. General ‘snapshot” profiles are provided on 7 other countries, including Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, Aden, Syria and Lebanon.
D) The Discriminatory Response of the United Nations to the Plight of Jewish Refugees
From 1948 onward, the response of the international community to assist Palestinian refugees arising out of the Arab-Israeli conflict was immediate and definitive. During that same period, there was no concomitant United Nations’ response, nor any comparable international action, to alleviate the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
The sole comparison that can be made between Palestinian and Jewish refugees is that both were determined to be bona fide refugees under international law, albeit each according to different internationally accepted definitions and statutes – the former covered by UNRWA and the latter by the UNHCR.
As far as the response of the United Nations is concerned, the similarity ends there. The contrasts, however, are stark:
a) Since 1947, there have been 1063 UN General Assembly resolutions dealing with virtually every aspect of the Middle East and the Arab Israeli conflict.
b) Fully 167 of these UN resolutions refer directly and specifically to the ‘plight’ of Palestinian refugees.
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c) In none of these 1063 UN resolutions on the Middle East is there a specific reference to, nor any expression of concern for, the estimated 1,000,000 Jews living in, or being displaced from Arab countries during the twentieth century.
d) Numerous UN agencies and organizations were involved in a variety of efforts, or others were specifically created (e.g. UNRWA) to provide protection, relief, and assistance to Palestinian refugees. No such attention and assistance was forthcoming from these UN agencies for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
e) Since 1948, billions of dollars have been spent by the international community - by the UN, its affiliated entities and member states - to provide relief and assistance to Palestinian refugees. During that same period, no such international financial support was ever provided to ameliorate the plight of Jewish refugees.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established by United Nations General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949 to carry out urgent, direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees. However, Arab governments, supported by Palestinian leaders, have consistently rejected any proposal or initiative designed to provide more permanent resettlement and housing for the Palestinian refugees, preferring to utilize Palestinian refugees’ continuing plight for political purposes.
E) The Legal Case for Rights and Redress
In the context of the Middle East, it would be an injustice to ignore the rights of Jews from Arab countries. As a matter of law and equity, it would not be appropriate to recognize the claim of Palestinian refugees to redress without recognizing a right to redress for former Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
The international definition of a refugee clearly applies to Jews displaced from Arab countries:
A refugee is a person who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country...”
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees
On two occasions, in 1957 and again in 1967, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) determined that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were refugees who fell within the mandate of the UNHCR.
“Another emergency problem is now arising: that of refugees from Egypt. There is no doubt in my mind that those refugees from Egypt who are not able, or not willing to avail themselves of the protection of the Government of their nationality fall under the mandate of my office.”
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Mr. Auguste Lindt, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Report of the UNREF Executive Committee, Fourth Session – Geneva 29 January to 4 February, 1957.
“I refer to our recent discussion concerning Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries in consequence of recent events. I am now able to inform you that such persons may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this Office.”
Dr. E. Jahn, Office of the UN High Commissioner, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Document No. 7/2/3/Libya, July 6, 1967.
At the United Nations, on November 22nd, 1967, the Security Council unanimously adopted, Resolution 242, laying down the principles for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East
Still considered the primary vehicle for resolving the Arab-Israel conflict, Resolution 242, stipulates that a comprehensive peace settlement should necessarily include “a just settlement of the refugee problem”. No distinction is made between Arab refugees and Jewish refugees.
On Thursday, November 16, 1967 the United Kingdom submitted their draft of Resolution 242 [S/8247] to the UN Security Council. The UK version of 242 was not exclusive, and called for a just settlement of “the refugee problem.” Just four days after the United Kingdom submission, the Soviet Union’s U.N. delegation submitted their own draft Resolution 242 to the Security Council [S/8253] restricting the “just settlement” only to “Palestinian refugees” [Para. 3 (c)].
On Wednesday, November 22, 1967, the Security Council gathered for its 1382nd meeting in New York at which time, the United Kingdom’s draft of Resolution 242 was voted on and unanimously approved.2 Immediately after the UK’s version of 242 was adopted, the Soviet delegation advised the Security Council, that “it will not insist, at the present stage of our consideration of the situation in the Near East, on a vote on the draft Resolution submitted by the Soviet Union” which would have limited 242 to Palestinian refugees only.3
Thus the attempt by the Soviets to restrict the “just settlement of the refugee problem” merely to “Palestinian refugees” was not successful. The international community adoption of the UK’s inclusive version signaled a desire for 242 to seek a just solution for all – including Jewish refugees - arising from the Middle East conflict.
Moreover, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, the US Ambassador to the United Nations who was seminally involved in drafting4 the unanimously adopted Resolution, told The Chicago Tribune that the Soviet version of Resolution 242 was “not even-handed.”5 He later pointed out that:
“The Resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers both to Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars…” 6
2 Security Council Official Records - November 22, 1967 - S/PV.1382 - Paragraph 67
3 Security Council Official Records - November 22, 1967 - S/PV.1382 - Paragraph 117
3 Security Council Official Records - November 22, 1967 - S/PV.1382 - Paragraph 117
4 Transcript, Arthur J. Goldberg Oral History Interview I, 3/23/83, by Ted Gittinger; Lyndon B. Johnson Library. March 23, 1983; Pg I-10
5 “Russia stalls UN Action on Middle East.” The Chicago Tribune. November 21, 1967 pg. B9
5 “Russia stalls UN Action on Middle East.” The Chicago Tribune. November 21, 1967 pg. B9
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