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Jewish Refugees expelled from Arab countries
Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.
In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.
This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.
Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.
Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.
I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.
There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.
What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?
When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.
The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."
In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.
Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."
Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.
Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.
In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.
All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.
Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.
Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.
Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.
Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (http://www.jimena-justice.org). E-mail us at insight [at] sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/06/INGM2BJ...
This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.
Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.
Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.
I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.
There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.
What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?
When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.
The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."
In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.
Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."
Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.
Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.
In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.
All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.
Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.
Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.
Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.
Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (http://www.jimena-justice.org). E-mail us at insight [at] sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/06/INGM2BJ...
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The Arabs living in Israel left for Arab countries when Israel was attacked by six Arab countries, following recommendations of the attackers, who wanted to push the Jews to the sea.
See the link for the photos of Jews pushing Palestinians into the sea when the Zionist entity aka "Israel" was created.
The vanishing Jews of the Arab world
Baghdad native tells the story of being a Middle East refugee
- Semha Alwaya
Sunday, March 6, 2005
In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.
This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.
Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.
Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.
I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.
There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.
What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?
When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.
The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."
In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.
Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."
Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.
Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.
In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.
All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.
Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.
Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.
Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.
Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (http://www.jimena-justice.org). E-mail us at insight [at] sfchronicle.com.
Page C - 3
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/06/INGM2BJH7U1.DTL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/06/INGM2BJH7U1.DTL&type=printable
I guess israel did a really shitty job of "pushing them all into the sea" huh? Because that's a pretty HUGE PERCENTAGE OF ISRAELIS that are ARAB/MUSLIM.
Dumb fucking anti-israel morons
Now-- the zionists here should oppose the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that is occuring NOW.
by Joe Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2005 at 8:29 AM
If the Jews "pushed the palistinians in the seas' why are there ONE MILLION ISRAEL ARAB CITIZENS right now?
I guess israel did a really shitty job of "pushing them all into the sea" huh? Because that's a pretty HUGE PERCENTAGE OF ISRAELIS that are ARAB/MUSLIM.
Dumb fucking anti-israel morons]
Historian Benny Morris acknowledged that the Israelis used violence and intimidation as deliberate state policy in 1948 to drive out a lot of Palestinians, with the approval of Ben Gurion
Morris deplored the fact, however, that Ben Gurion didn't finish the job
My theory is that Ben Gurion wasn't confident that enough Jews would emigrate to Israel to make the economy viable if all the Palestinians were expelled, so he allowed just enough Arabs to remain to fill lower level, menial service work positions, without threatening Jewish domination of the country's politics and social life
I don't recall if CT agreed, but he didn't really disagree very strongly, either
anyway, posts come and go here, and I'm too tired to search for our early posts, and CT is certainly capable of responding when he wants
who knows? he might even motivate me to go back and find them, if they still exist
--Richard
Welcoming Remarks
Regina Malaka Waldman
Co-Chair, JIMENA
I want to welcome all of you and thank you for coming....
I know this will be an incredible day. I hope it will also be a historic day.
Because today we are here to tell the untold story of my people, the forgotten story of the Mizrahi Jews who lived in the Arab Countries.
This is a veiled part of Jewish history --- 900 thousand people --- the Jews of Islamic lands, whose fascinating, story-- tragic and triumphant -- was ignored – and is still being ignored -- not only by the world, but by the Jews themselves.
Who were these Jews, these people who lived as Dhimmis,- as second class citizens in the Arab countries? How did we live under Islamic codes and restrictions? What became of our civilization?
The short answer is that we were uprooted and scattered and we lost our homes, our culture and our way of life, after three millenia.. But we must not lose our history.
I came today not only to help tell this story but also to say to you – that maybe, it is "maktub"- maybe it is destiny that our story turns out to be the key to the crisis we Jews find ourselves in today.
Suddenly, world Jewry finds itself in trouble. Israel is cornered and bleeding and no one, knows a way out. The conflict in the Middle East has become a religious conflict in the eyes of the Islamic world, between the world’s 14 million Jews and 1.2 billion Muslims.
Islamic anti-Semitism, funded by Wahabi oil, and pumped like black poison through vast networks – the madrassa schools, the mosques and Arab media is teaching the children of that 1.2 billion Muslims that to kill our children is a holy deed.
(Elie Wiesel once said:” He who kills in God’s name makes HIS God a murderer.”)
The world has been deceived by the media: that the fight is between the small Palestinian people who only want a piece of land and the Goliath, the military power of Israel.
The media teaches the world that we Jews are to blame for the suffering of the Palestinians. And if we are to blame, why should we not be punished? Or hated?
This anti-Semitic sentiment has infiltrated our academic institutions, our human rights movement and now, it has even infiltrated our anti-war movement.
This notion is now being globalized by pinning the Iraqi war also on the Jews.
My friend Charles Jacobs calls it “Palestinianism”- the new banner of the Left.
But the truth is, that the conflict is about Jewish existence and self-determination in the Middle East. The conflict is over whether the Arab/Muslim world can accept the fact that Jews should have self determination. That is why the majority of the Arab countries do not want to recognize Israel.
And so if we do not learn to teach the world that truth, we will continue to be attacked and defamed.
It is our story, you see, that unveils the hidden, but most basic truths, about the conflict in the Middle East: That the conflict originates in Arab and Muslim views and treatment of Jewish people, in Muslim religious laws and traditions concerning Jews. Because they believe that Jews should live as subjugated people, as Dhimmis. As second class citizens. This anti-Jewish hatred has targeted Jews for centuries. (and, by the way, Christians and Copts and Bahais too).
I believe it is our story – the story of my people, the “Jews from the Arab countries”: -- which could be the antidote to the poisonous hatred being propagated against the Jews today.
Now is our time. Now is exactly the time the world needs to know – more than ever -- what it is like to live as non-Muslims under Islam.
The survivors of Europe have told their story. We have not told ours. We must take our inspiration and our courage from them. We have a duty and a responsibility to convey the facts of our lives as Dhimmis under Islam. We, the last generation of eyewitnesses, must not miss this opportunity.
And so today, perhaps for the first time, you will hear testimonies from Jews who lived under Islam.
We were marginalized, humiliated , defamed, denounced, demonized and finally dispersed.
Yes, dispersed: We the Jews of Islam know the destructive power of anti-Semitism in the Arab world better than anyone else. We have seen it used for ethnic cleansing.
Of the 900 thousand Jews who lived in the Arab world, only 8,000 remain. Think about that! 900,000 Jews were made refugees, forced to flee our homes.
We were never recognized.
When we became refugees, the UN Human Rights Commission didn’t build refugee camps for us, and they didn't pass resolutions for us.
In fact, the UN Human Rights commission has voted Libya as the head of the commission.
For me, this is a personal outrage because my family and my entire community have been chased out of Libya.
In 1967, the Libyan population took to the street, killing Jewish people rampaging and burning their properties. My family like the rest of the Jewish community was expelled from Libya and made into destitute refugees.
My father’s warehouse was burnt to the ground. All of our assets were confiscated. I was 19 years old at the time.
And if that wasn’t enough,
While attempting to flee the country, the bus driver and the conductor emptied the gas tank of the bus on the ground in an attempted to burn the bus taking my family and I to the airport. It is thanks to a British man that we were rescued from certain death.
Libya practices arbitrary detention and torture. In the country that now heads the UN Human Rights Commission, there is no free press, no elections. Libya imports black slaves from the Sudan. Libya practices ethnic cleansing. Indeed, Libya has cleansed itself of its Jews. 38,000 Jews, and now there are none left. But the European countries abstained and allowed it to happen, they didn't have the courage to speak out or vote against this outrageous travesty.
And this slaving nation heads the UN Human Rights Commission.
(To the U.N, I’d like to say: HARAM ALEKEM – SHAME ON YOU.)
After today, you will be armed with our story. While traveling to different campuses, from Ucla and Stanford to Columbia, Yale or Harvard, my colleagues Joseph Abdel Wahed, Semha Alwaya and I have seen how effective advocacy for Israel is when we talk about the Jewish refugees of the Middle East.
Our communities have been destroyed, but our memory is strong. Our message is empowering college students to talk back to anti-Israel propaganda. We must teach our students to demand an honest and fair discussion about refugees. We must insist that when people talk about refugees, that they are not talking only about Palestinians.
Repeat after me: We must insist that when people talk about refugee, that they are not talking only about Palestinians.
Unless we have a clear picture of the past, we cannot move towards a just future
We, the Jews from the Arab Countries, may not be able to rebuild our community and receive compensation for many decades, but we will not rest as long as the cause of human rights is betrayed by the UN and the international community.
Today we need to confront the forces of hatred that made 900 thousand Jews into refugees, because they are the same forces of hatred that drive the conflict in the Middle East.
And so today, for the same reason, I was nearly burnt alive in the Libyan desert, people are blown apart in discotheques in Bali, people are bombed on buses in Tel Aviv. People are incinerated in American skyscrapers.
We know the destructive power of Arab anti-Semitism.
We know that hate is a weapon of mass destruction.
We, the Jews from the Arab countries have a special responsibility, which is to be the soldiers in the front line of the propaganda war against Israel and the Jewish people
That is what Jimena is all about.
As you will learn today, in the words of Simon Wiesenthal.
“Freedom is not a gift from heaven, we must fight for it everyday."
From today on, you will help us in that noble fight.
The Arabs have taken away our homes, they have destroyed our culture, but they will never crush our spirit to fight for justice.
THe antisemites, oh, excuse me, antizionists, ALWAYS, ALWAYS (1) blame antisemitism on jews or "zionists"
(2) or deny antisemitism even exists
3) always twist it against jews or israel, somehow
________________________________________________________________________________________
My previous posts were removed. Is this Censor-CT Week, or has the editorial board reached a resolution to delete a certain chunk of my posts on an ongoing basis as is being done to Ms. Campbell? I challenge an editor with enough courage to step forward and explain what's going on exactly.
The case of the Refugees
Avi Beker
Secretary General,World Jewish Congress
Just before the collapse of the Camp David talks in July of 2000, President Bill Clinton noted that the refugee problem in the Middle East is two-sided as it includes both Arab and Jewish refugees. The President spoke about compensating the Jews that were expelled from Arab lands:
“ [the}fund [should] compensates the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel. Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel because they were made refugees in their own land.”
Exchange of Refugees
The Jews that became refugees in their own land and yet it is a forgotten exodus-why?
There are several social and psychological reasons but essentially we are dealing with forgotten refugees. They are no longer Jewish refugees and thank God for that. Today, these former refugees feel that their story must be told and transmitted to the next generation.
We are here to tell this story.
Israel was established and populated by several waves of refugees. There were refugees of persecution in Eastern Europe, refugees victim to the Nazi regime, holocaust survivors and almost parallel to them were the Jews from Arab countries. Israel- tiny, arid, practically devoid of natural resources, always under war conditions and security threats- has done its utmost to take in and rehabilitate its refugees, multiplying its population by eight between 1948 and 2000.
Why is it that of the approximately 135 million refugees created over the last century, only the Palestinians have retained a dismal, nationless status?
This is the paradox.
The attempt to perpetuate the Arab refugee problem lies in the essence of hatred in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is the tragedy of the Palestinians and the source of the endless, most vicious terrorism we face today in the Middle East.
Professor Bernard Lewis, a leading scholar on Islam and Arab history at Princeton University, points out the sad paradox giving examples of two cases of refugees under British rule in the late forties. One conflict is that between India and Pakistan and the other is the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In 1947, while Britain was disengaging from Palestine, it was also withdrawing from India which lead to the birth of independent Pakistani and Indian states. Whereas the Arab-Israeli conflict created hundreds of thousands of refugees, the Indians and Pakistanis wisely agreed to transfer millions of their people across the border in order to defuse ethnic and religious tensions. India sent Muslims to Pakistan which, in turn, sent Hindus to India. Both states granted citizenship to these refugees.
The much smaller and perhaps more easily remedied problem of Arab refuges is a sad paradox- it has cost the Western world so many billions of dollars in humanitarian aid that only perpetuates the refugees’ plight. This has monopolized its media attention for over half a century when alternatives in refugee transfers, such as the one between India and Pakistan, have proven effective.
The Jews that became refugees in their own land and yet it is a forgotten exodus-why?
There are several social and psychological reasons but essentially we are dealing with forgotten refugees. They are no longer Jewish refugees and thank God for that. Today, these former refugees feel that their story must be told and transmitted to the next generation.
We are here to tell this story.
Israel was established and populated by several waves of refugees. There were refugees of persecution in Eastern Europe, refugees victim to the Nazi regime, holocaust survivors and almost parallel to them were the Jews from Arab countries. Israel- tiny, arid, practically devoid of natural resources, always under war conditions and security threats- has done its utmost to take in and rehabilitate its refugees, multiplying its population by eight between 1948 and 2000.
Why is it that of the approximately 135 million refugees created over the last century, only the Palestinians have retained a dismal, nationless status?
This is the paradox.
The attempt to perpetuate the Arab refugee problem lies in the essence of hatred in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is the tragedy of the Palestinians and the source of the endless, most vicious terrorism we face today in the Middle East.
Professor Bernard Lewis, a leading scholar on Islam and Arab history at Princeton University, points out the sad paradox giving examples of two cases of refugees under British rule in the late forties. One conflict is that between India and Pakistan and the other is the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In 1947, while Britain was disengaging from Palestine, it was also withdrawing from India which lead to the birth of independent Pakistani and Indian states. Whereas the Arab-Israeli conflict created hundreds of thousands of refugees, the Indians and Pakistanis wisely agreed to transfer millions of their people across the border in order to defuse ethnic and religious tensions. India sent Muslims to Pakistan which, in turn, sent Hindus to India. Both states granted citizenship to these refugees.
The much smaller and perhaps more easily remedied problem of Arab refuges is a sad paradox- it has cost the Western world so many billions of dollars in humanitarian aid that only perpetuates the refugees’ plight. This has monopolized its media attention for over half a century when alternatives in refugee transfers, such as the one between India and Pakistan, have proven effective.