I am a refugee

I am a refugee
By DANNY AYALON
09/01/2010 22:28


As a descendant of a family forced out of Algeria, my father and I – and the millions of other Jews from families who were expelled from Arab countries after 1948 – are entitled to redress.

As a sitting member of a democratic government, it might appear strange to declare that I am a refugee. However, my father, his parents and family were just a few of the almost one million Jews who were expelled or forced out of Arab lands. My father and his family were Algerian, from a Jewish community thousands of years old that predated the Arab conquest of North Africa and even Islam. Upon receiving independence, Algeria allowed only Muslims to become citizens and drove the indigenous Jewish community and the rest of my family out.

While many people constantly refer to the Arab or Palestinian refugees, few are even aware of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.


While those Arabs who fled or left Mandatory Palestine and Israel numbered roughly 750,000, there were roughly 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Before the State of Israel was reestablished in 1948, there were almost one million Jews in Arab lands, today there are around 5,000.

An important distinction between the two groups is the fact that many Palestinian Arabs were actively involved in the conflict initiated by the surrounding Arab nations, while Jews from Arab lands were living peacefully, even in a subservient dhimmi status, in their countries of origin for many centuries if not millennia.

In addition, Jewish refugees, as they were more urban and professional, as opposed to the more rural Palestinians, amassed far more property and wealth which they had to leave in their former county.

Financial economists have estimated that, in today’s figures, the total amount of assets lost by the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, including communal property such as schools, synagogues and hospitals, is almost twice that of the assets lost by the Palestinian refugees. Furthermore, one must remember that Israel returned over 90 percent of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Palestinian refugees during the 1950s.

EVEN THOUGH the number of Jewish refugees and their assets are larger than that of the Palestinians, the international community only appears to be aware of the latter’s plight.

There are numerous major international organizations devoted to the Palestinian refugees. There is an annual conference held at the United Nations and a refugee agency was created just for the Palestinian refugees. While all the world’s refugees have one agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians fall under the auspices of another agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

UNWRA’s budget for 2010 is almost half of UNHCR’s budget.

Equally impressive is the fact that UNHCR prides itself on having found “durable solutions” for “tens of millions” of refugees since 1951, the year of its establishment. However, UNRWA does not even claim to have found “durable solutions” for anyone.

If that is not distorted enough, let’s look at the definitions and how they are applied: normally the definition of a refugee only applies to the person that fled and sought refuge, while a Palestinian refugee is the person that fled and all of their descendants for all time. So, according to the UNRWA definition of conferring refugee status on descendants, I would be a refugee.

However, I do not consider myself so; I am a proud citizen of the State of Israel. The Jewish refugees found their national expression in Israel, so to, the Arab refugees should find their national aspirations being met by a Palestinian state.

WITH DIRECT negotiations about to resume between Israel and the Palestinians, the spotlight will be returned to this issue. The so-called Palestinian ‘right of return’ is legal fiction. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, the supposed source for this ‘right’ does not mention this term, is not legally binding and, like all other relevant United Nations resolutions uses the intentionally ambiguous term ‘refugees’ with no appellation.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, still seen as the primary legal framework for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict asserts that a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement should necessarily include “a just settlement of the refugee problem.”

No distinction is made between Arab refugees and Jewish refugees.

In fact, one of the leading drafters of the resolution, Justice Arthur Goldberg, the United States’ Chief Delegate to the United Nations, said: “The resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers both to Arab and Jewish refugees.”

In addition, every peace conference and accord attended or signed between Israel and its Arab neighbors uses the term “refugees” without qualification.

During the famous Camp David discussions in 2000, president Clinton, the facilitator and host of the negotiations said: “There will have to be some sort of international fund set up for the refugees. There is, I think, some interest, interestingly enough, on both sides, in also having a fund which 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”.

In 2008, the US Congress passed House Resolution 185 granting, for the first time, equal recognition to Jewish refugees, while affirming that the US government will now recognize that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated equally.

I am proud of the fact that the Knesset passed a resolution in February of this year that will make compensation for Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries after 1948 an integral part of any future peace negotiations. The Israeli bill stipulates that “The state of Israel will not sign, directly or by proxy, any agreement or treaty with a country or authority dealing with a political settlement in the Middle East without ensuring the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries according to the UN’s refugee treaty.”

Before 1948 there were nearly 900,000 Jews in Arab lands while only a few thousand remain. Where is the international outrage, the conferences, the proclamations for redress and compensation? While the Palestinian refugee issue has become a political weapon to beat Israel, the Arab League has ordered its member states not to provide their Palestinian population with citizenship; Israel absorbed all of its refugees, whether fleeing the Holocaust or persecution and expulsion from Arab lands.

People like my father, the hundreds of thousands who came to Israel and the millions of Israelis descended from these refugees are entitled to redress. It is vital that this issue return to the international agenda, so we don’t once again see an asymmetrical and distorted treatment of Arabs and Jews in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The writer is Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

'Include Jewish refugees from Arab lands in talks'

'Include Jewish refugees from Arab lands in talks'
12/14/2010 22:09


Foreign Ministry pushing to include Jews who fled from Arab countries in core issue discussion with the US about refugees.

With the Palestinian refugee issue one of the core issues expected to be at the center of the US's new diplomatic push, the foreign ministry is actively engaged in an effort to ensure that Jewish refuges who fled Arab lands are not forgotten.

Deputy Foreign Ministry Danny Ayalon, who is leading the push to include Jewish refugees in the core issue discussion with the US about refugees, said "it is vitally important to return this issue to the international agenda. It is a matter of justice, closure and righting a wrong."

Ayalon, whose father came to Israel after being forced out of Algeria, said this issue has "a practical as well as a moral aspect. The demands from the two sides are asymmetrical, the Palestinians talk of rights and justice [for Palestinian refugees], yet the rights and justice of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands have been ignored and suppressed for too long. "

In an article Ayalon wrote in September in The Jerusalem Post entitled "I am a refugee," Ayalon said that while some 750,000 Arabs fled or left Mandatory Palestine, there were some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

"We are going to make an effort now to bring to the forefront the plight of the Jews from the Arab countries,” he said.

The foreign ministry, in an effort to place this issue high on the international agenda, has appointed an official to coordinate the matter. He has met over the last few weeks with historical and legal experts, and is preparing a detailed position paper that will be entered into the discussion on the refugee issue.

“We will make sure that this will be an important and integral part of the negotiations for a final settlement," Ayalon said. "Just as the Arab refugees is an issue, so is the Jewish refugees.”

The Foreign Ministry recently sent a cable to all Israel's representations abroad calling on the country's envoys to bring the issue up with the leadership in the capitals where they are serving.

Diplomatic officials said the reason for raising the issue is not necessarily to receive compensation for the Jews who left the Arab countries, though this could be a factor when the Palestinians demand reparations from Israel for Palestinian refugees, but rather to seek redress, and an acknowledgement by the world that in 1948 there was not only a Palestinian refugee issue, but a second one, involving Jews who – unlike the Palestinians – were fully absorbed.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made clear that the core issues he believes should be addressed first in the indirect talks being conducted by the US are refugees, recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and security. The Palestinians, however want to focus first on borders and Jerusalem.

Why did Jews go to Israel from other Middle Eastern countries?

Why did Jews go to Israel from other Middle Eastern countries?
Following the 1947 United Nations vote to partition Palestine, Arab violence against Jews erupted throughout the Middle East and North Africa where more than 870,000 Jews were living (1945 estimate). Many of the Jews resided in communities with a continuous Jewish existence for 2,500 years or more.

Even before the November 1947 UN vote, Arab delegates to the UN, in particular those of Egypt and Iraq, had hinted at their intentions in speeches, warning that Partition might endanger Jews in Arab lands, intensify antisemitism and lead to massacres of Jews. These veiled threats must have had a chilling impact on Jews in Arab lands where memories of the pro-Nazi stance of the local Arab governments and nationalists were still fresh, especially in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, as well as in Libya where Arab mobs had accepted the occupying Germans’ invitation to plunder the Jews. And recall the incitement to murder Jews issued over Radio Berlin during World War II by Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem. These facts make obvious nonsense out of claims that Jews were expelled from Arab countries only because the Palestinian Arabs were expelled from Palestine.

In Iraq, new laws made Zionism punishable by death. In Aleppo, Syria, 300 Jewish homes and 11 synagogues were burned to the ground, and half of the city’s 4,000 Jews fled elsewhere. In Aden, 82 Jews were killed. Pogroms accompanied by confiscation of Jewish property and belongings was the norm in Arab countries. From 1948 on, Jewish communities that had survived in Arab countries since antiquity dwindled to a few families or became extinct.

Aproximately 600,000 Jews sought refuge in the State of Israel. Since their belongings were confiscated as the price of leaving, they arrived in Israel pennyless, but they were welcomed and quickly absorbed into Israeli society. In reality, an exchange of populations took place between Jews leaving Arab countries and Arabs leaving Jewish Palestine. But while the Jewish refugees quickly became productive citizens of their new home country of Israel, the Palestinian Arabs were forced by their politically motivated leaders to fester as “refugees” for generations.

Israel absorbed the Jews who fled Arab countries and millions of refugees from Nazi and Soviet Europe in the same time. After brief periods of adjustment, the Jews fleeing life-threatening conditions in other lands became indistinguishable from other Israelis. Today tiny Israel, with relatively few resources, has no “refugee problem” while the wealthy Arab countries, with vast lands and oil riches, cannot find a way to help the Palestinian Arabs.

MIDDLE EAST REFUGEES - PALESTINIAN and JEWISH

MIDDLE EAST REFUGEES - PALESTINIAN & JEWISH
Friday, March 14, 2008
Irwin Cotler: 'There In No Moral Or Legal Basis For The Demand That Palestinian Refugees Be Allowed To Return To State Of Israel'
'Some One Million Jewish Refugees Were Forced To Flee Arab Countries Compared With An Estimated 550,000 Palestinian Refugees'

'Arab League Decision To Reject Partition Plan Of 1947 And Declare War On Nascent Jewish State Was Responsible For Both Jewish & Palestinian Refugees'



Irwin Cotler, a Canadian MP and former justice minister in Canada, has said there is no legal or moral basis for the Palestinian demand that the Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel. In an interview with IsraCast, Prof. Cotler contended that the Arab League rejection of the 1947 Partition Plan and its war against the new born state of Israel was responsible not only for the estimated 550,000 Palestinian refugees but also for the some 1,000,00 Jewish refugees who were driven out of Arab countries after their property and assets were sequestered.

'There is no moral or legal basis for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel - that's the professional opinion of Irwin Cotler, a McGill University law professor. After participating in an inquiry of the Palestinian and Jewish refugee issue in the Middle East, Cotler contends that it is the Arab League which bears responsibility not only for the estimated 550,000 Palestinian refugees but also for the estimated one million Jewish refugees who were forced to flee the Arab countries. Rather than accepting what was actually the first two state solution, the Arab countries declared war on the Jewish state and it was this Arab aggression that created two sets of refugees - the Palestinian and the Jewish refugees who were uprooted in the Arab countries who were forced to flee after their property and assets were sequestered.


operation "Magic Carpet" (1949-1950) - the entire community of Yemenite Jews (about 49,000) immigrated to Israel
Cotler said the inquiry uncovered an official Arab League document instructing its member states to impose Nirenberg type laws against their Jewish citizens.This deliberate campaign caused the forced expulsion of considerably more Jewish refugees than Palestinians who fled Israel when the Arab armies attacked the Jewish state. Therefore, there was no moral or legal basis to the claim for the Palestinian right of return to the very state that the Arab side tried to destroy. However, Cotler adds that the plight and suffering of the Palestinian refugees should be addressed from a humanitarian point of view and this also applied to the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.

The McGill law professor also took issue with the total exclusion of the Jewish refugees form the Arab countries during all discussion at the United Nations for the past sixty years. Cotler notes that the U.N. General Assembly has passed over 130 resolutions on Palestinian refugees without once referring to the Jewish refugees who were forced to flee the Arab states. Nor was there any basis for the contention that Jews lived lives of equality in the Arab countries. On the contrary, on the basis of Islam, Jews were tolerated as second class citizens.

Transcript of Interview with Irwin Cotler
Part one - The facts of Palestinian & Jewish refugee issues

David Essing: Law professor Irwin Cotler, a Canadian MP and a former Justice minister in Canada, has participated in a documented study of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.

Irwin Cotler: Well, the numbers with respect to Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been identified country by country, and the total number is some 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Some put the figure even somewhat higher - up to one million Jewish refugees from Arab countries. With respect to Palestinian refugees the numbers vary, depending on the different sources, but my own best appreciation would be that would be somewhere around 550,000 Palestinian refugees in that regard. So that number, from the point of view of comparison, there are considerably more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than there were Palestinian refugees.

David Essing: Yet, incredibly, over the past 60 years, there has been no mention of the Jewish refugees in any of the numerous U.N. resolutions that deal with the refugee issue.

Irwin Cotler: The United Nations General Assembly, for example, has adopted some 130 resolutions with regard to the refugee issue. All 130 resolutions address the question of Palestinian refugees, which I am saying is fair to do, but not one resolution - I repeat - not one resolution ever refers to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. In effect, what we’ve seen is that for the last 60 years the whole issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been eclipsed and expunged from the Middle East peace and justice narrative.

David Essing: And in this context, the partition plan of 1947, actually the first ever two state solution to the Arab Israeli conflict.

Irwin Cotler: It spoke then specifically of a Jewish state some 28 times in the partition resolution. As we know, the Jewish leadership at the time accepted it, the Arab leadership did not, and by its own acknowledgement then made war on the nascent Jewish state. The result was two groups of refugees: Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees, resulting from this Arab aggression. In effect, therefore, the Arab countries bear responsibility for not only what is a forgotten exodus of some 850,000 refugees, but a forced exodus, because not only did they make war on the nascent Jewish state, which produced the two groups of refugees, but the in fact, effectively, denationalized their own Jewish nationals, sequestrated their property, ceased their assets and alike and were responsible for the uprooting and displacement of the Jewish refugees.

David Essing: Irwin Cotler also says that an inquiry into the Jewish refugee issue has uncovered an official Arab lead document that instructed the Arab states to adopt Nazi type Nuremberg laws against their Jewish residents.

Irwin Cotler: There are two things about it that we know and can be documented: the first is that the expulsion in the Arab countries, from which they occurred, did not occur by accident. It was a result of state sanction, repression, in these countries, which included, again, rather unknown Nuremberg type laws, which were involved in, as I said, the denationalizing of their Jewish nationals, declaration of them as being enemies of the state and alike. And in addition to that, we found a document from the Arab League at the time, that called on its member states to do exactly that, which in fact ended up being done. So, in the report that we produced last November, on justice for Jews from Arab countries, rights and redress, we put side by side the Arab League document calling for the actual actions, that are then shown to have been undertaken by the member states of the Arab League at the time.

Part two - Irwin Cotler’s assessment

David Essing: Has the enormity of the holocaust of the European Jews in effect eclipsed the suffering of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, who have been excluded from the Middle East narrative?

Irwin Cotler: There are things in Jewish history which are too terrible to be believed, but they are not too terrible to have happened, and the holocaust in that sense is unique in the enormity of its tragedy, and therefore I make no comparison at all, ever, with it. At the same time, having said that, while it may have, because of the historical tragedy, overtaken the tragedy of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, that is in part because we focused, as well, on the accountability of the perpetrators of the holocaust as well as the victims, whom we have brought to justice, whereas in this instance the perpetrators of the uprooting and displacement of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries have never had to be brought to account. In fact, having the Arab League and the individual Arab countries acknowledge their role and responsibility in the displacement of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their, under international law, duty of redress for those that they have uprooted and displaced.

David Essing: You have said, Sir, that the recent Annapolis Conference on final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians and the U.S., that could have been a commemoration of the two state solution from the partition plan of 1947. But what specifically do you think needs to be done now? What should Israel be considering at this point?

Irwin Cotler: Well, I think that we should, as a matter of policy, the international community and Israel as a direct participant in the Annapolis peace negotiations, should ensure that the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is included in the final status core issues. If you look at the narrative, it has Palestinian refugees, Palestinian state, settlements and the division of Jerusalem. That is fine for the narrative of the Palestinians to put forward. But in there needs to be a parallel representation of issues. We need to discuss Jewish refugees from Arab countries along with Palestinian refugees. The legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East along with an independent Palestinian state. Questions of incitement and terror along with the question of settlements. And the narrative re Jerusalem as it comes from the Israeli side along with that from the Palestinian. What we need is a joiner of issues here, because without that we are, in effect, mischaracterizing the narrative of the Middle East as a whole.

David Essing: When it comes to these issues, there is the very sensitive Palestinian claim of right of return, and I would like to ask you now, as a professor of law from McGill university, what international law says about such a claim?

Irwin Cotler: With regard to the right of return, there is an international law saying, which says: “ex iniuria non oritur ius”, which means that no one can profit from the commission of an illegal act. You can’t have a situation where the Arab countries and the Arab League as their sponsor are on the one hand themselves responsible for the forced displacement of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, indeed for the two sets of refugees - Arab and Jewish, and then come forward as a claimant for the right of return in a situation where they brought about the expulsion of both sets of refugees to begin with. So I would say, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of law, that right of return does not in fact exist for the Palestinian refugees, though a right of appreciation of their suffering from the humanitarian dimension must be there, and a resolution of their situation needs to be addressed.

Historic Recognition of the Jewish Refugees - Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries
Although much is heard about the plight of the Palestinian refugees, little is said about the Jews who fled from Arab states. In 1945, there were more than 870,000 Jews living in the various Arab states. Many of their communities dated back 2,500 years. Throughout 1947 and 1948 these Jews were persecuted. Their property and belongings were confiscated. There were anti-Jewish riots in Egypt, Lybia, Syria, and Iraq.

Historic Recognition of the Jewish Refugees
Monday, June 30, 2008
U.S. House of Representatives: 'Rights Of Jewish Refugees From Arab Countries Must Also Be Recognized'

U.S. House of Representatives

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a resolution calling for the recognition of Jewish refugees forced to flee the Arab countries. In the wording of the non-binding resolution: 'Explicit reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees as a matter of law and equity'. In a recent interview with IsraCast, Canadian Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister in Canada, estimated there were more Jewish Jewish refugees from the Arab countries than there were Palestinian refugees.


110TH CONGRESS, 1ST SESSION

H. RES. 185
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the creation of refugee populations in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region as a result of human rights violations.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. NADLER (for himself, Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN, Mr. CROWLEY, and Mr. FERGUSON) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the creation of refugee populations in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region as a result of human rights violations.

Whereas armed conflicts in the Middle East have created refugee populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands and comprised of peoples from many ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds;

Whereas Jews and other ethnic groups have lived mostly as minorities in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region for more than 2,500 years, more than 1,000 years before the advent of Islam;

Whereas the United States has long voiced its concern about the mistreatment of minorities and the violation of human rights in the Middle East and elsewhere;

Related Articles

Palestinian Hybrid


Goldstone & Islamic Terrorism


MIDDLE EAST REFUGEES - PALESTINIAN & JEWISH


More Than One Million Jewish Refugees


Whereas the United States continues to play a pivotal role in seeking an end to the conflict in the Middle East and to promoting a peace that will benefit all the peoples of the region;

Whereas a comprehensive peace in the region will require the resolution of all outstanding issues through bilateral and multilateral negotiations involving all concerned parties;

Whereas approximately 850,000 Jews have been displaced from Arab countries since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948;

Whereas the United States has demonstrated interest and concern about the mistreatment, violation of rights, forced expulsion, and expropriation of assets of minority populations in general, and in particular, former Jewish refugees displaced from Arab countries as evidenced, inter alia, by -

(1) the Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan on October 4, 1977, which states that ‘‘[a] solution of the problem of Arab refugees and Jewish refugees will be discussed in accordance with rules which should be agreed’’;

(2) after negotiating the Camp David Accords, the Framework for Peace in the Middle East, the statement by President Jimmy Carter in a press conference on October 27, 1977, that ‘‘Palestinians have rights . . . obviously there are Jewish refugees . . . they have the same rights as others do’’; and

(3) in an interview after Camp David II in July 2000, at which the issue of Jewish refugees displaced from Arab lands was discussed, the statement by President Clinton that ‘‘There will have to be some sort of international fund set up for the refugees. There is, I think, some interest, interestingly enough, on both sides, in also having a fund which 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.’’;

Whereas the international definition of a refugee clearly applies to Jews who fled the persecution of Arab regimes, where 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);

Whereas on January 29, 1957, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), determined that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were refugees that fell within the mandate of the UNHCR;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, calls for a ‘‘just settlement of the refugee problem’’ without distinction between Palestinian and Jewish refugees, and this is evidenced by -

(1) the Soviet Union’s United Nations delegation attempt to restrict the ‘‘just settlement’’ mentioned in Resolution 242 solely to Palestinian refugees (S/8236, dis-cussed by the Security Council at its 1382nd meeting of November 22, 1967, notably at paragraph 117, in the words of Ambassador Kouznetsov of the Soviet Union); this attempt failed, signifying the international community’s intention of having the resolution address the rights of all Middle East refugees; and

(2) a statement by Justice Arthur Goldberg, the United States’ Chief Delegate to the United Nations at that time, who was instrumental in drafting the unanimously adopted Resolution 242, where he has 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.’’;

Whereas in his opening remarks before the January 28, 1992, organizational meeting for multilateral negotiations on the Middle East in Moscow, United States Secretary of State James Baker made no distinction between Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees in articulating the mission of the Refugee Working Group, stating that ‘‘[t]he refugee group will consider practical ways of improving the lot of people throughout the region who have been displaced from their homes’’;

Whereas the Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which refers in Phase III to an ‘‘agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue,’’ uses language that is equally applicable to all persons displaced as a result of the conflict in the Middle East;

Whereas Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians have affirmed that a comprehensive solution to the Middle East conflict will require a just solution to the plight of all ‘‘refugees’’; Whereas the initiative to secure rights and redress for Jewish and other minorities who were forced to flee Arab countries does not conflict with the right of Palestinian refugees to claim redress;

Whereas the international community should be aware of the plight of Jews and other minority groups displaced from countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf;

Whereas an international campaign is proceeding in some 40 countries to record the history and legacy of Jewish refugees from Arab countries;

Whereas no just, comprehensive Middle East peace can be reached without addressing the uprooting of centuries-old Jewish communities in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf; and

Whereas it would be inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for former Jewish, Christian, and other refugees from Arab countries: Now, therefore, be it resolved, that -

(1) for any comprehensive Middle East peace agreement to be credible and enduring, the agree4 ment must address and resolve all outstanding issues relating to the legitimate rights of all refugees in the Middle East, including Jews, Christians, and other populations displaced from countries in the re2 gion; and

(2) the President should instruct the United States Representative to the United Nations and all United States representatives in bilateral and multi6 lateral fora to -

(A) use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States to ensure that any resolu9 tions relating to the issue of Middle East refu10 gees, and which include a reference to the re11 quired resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, must also include a similarly explicit ref13 erence to the resolution of the issue of Jewish, Christian, and other refugees from Arab coun15 tries; and

(B) make clear that the United States Government supports the position that, as an integral part of any comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, the issue of refugees from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf must be resolved in a manner that includes recogni22 tion of the legitimate rights of and losses in23 curred by all refugees displaced from Arab countries including Jews, Christians, and other 2 minority groups.

ARAB REFUGEES VERSUS JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB COUNTRIES

ARAB REFUGEES VERSUS JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB COUNTRIES


The following is well-known : One will not be able to change a warped mind... and, one cannot straighten a bent tree... The Arabs by nature, are an incited/deluded lots from womb to maturity! Apart from the words of their Qur'an who orders them to kill the non believers, myths, chimeras and exaggerations are most of the information they get from their respective elders who in turn, have received it from their elders... This continuous hate generated at the crib will never end towards the Jews until THE TWO PEOPLES ARE SEPARATED FOREVER! Now as far as the refugees is concerned… One has to understand that the existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan of 1947 and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs. There is no more apt expression than this on the origin of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem in 1948.

These are the words of Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, in an interview published on 6 September 1948 in the Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, soon after the events occurred and before this topic became an important theme of Arab propaganda…

The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish State began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families.

They knew that a war was imminent; they didn't doubt that the Arab armies would quickly win a sweeping victory, and they wanted to be as far as possible from the battlefield. The second wave of emigration came in the spring of 1948, after fighting had erupted between Arab irregulars and Jewish defense forces. This time the urban population was involved, and in far greater numbers - for example, some seventy thousand from Jaffa and sixty thousand from Haifa. An estimated total of over two hundred thousand Arabs emigrated in this wave, despite strenuous efforts of the Jews in various parts of the country to dissuade them from leaving. The Haifa Workers' Council, for example, published, on 28 April 1948, the following plea: "...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families." This appeal, however, and many similar ones, were of no avail. Most of the local Arab leaders had already managed to take flight, and directly or indirectly, they encouraged the Palestinian population from across the border to "temporarily" leave their homes.

But the largest wave of Arab refugees, three hundred thousand or more, followed the massive Arab invasion of 15 May 1948, the day after Israel's declaration of independence. The large majority of these emigrants were of the poorer strata of the Arab population, both urban and rural, the former group including day laborers such as the thousands of port workers who had come to Palestine from Syria. John Bern Castle, chief assessor in the mandatory government, in a report to the Conciliation Commission (comprising representatives of the United States, France, and Turkey) appointed by the UN in the fall of 1948, assessed the property abandoned by the refugees at 200 million pounds sterling -considerably less than the value of the property the nine hundred and fifty thousand Jewish refugees from Arab countries had left behind.

In a discussion of the Arab refugee problem in the UN Security Council on 4 March 1949, the Soviet delegate virtually confirmed the words of the secretary of the Arab High Council previously cited. He said: "Statements have been made on the Arab refugee question, but why should the State of Israel be blamed for the existence of that problem? When seeking to determine responsibility for the existence of the problem of the Arab refugees, we cannot fail to mention the outside forces ... They pursue their own selfish interests which have nothing in common either with the cause of peace and international security or with the interests of the Arab and Jewish peoples, and which only correspond to the aggressive designs of the leading circles of some states." The fact is that the Arab attack on Israel created two parallel refugee problems - one Arab and the other Jewish.

Analogous to the approximately four hundred and fifty to six hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 and found refuge in parts of Arab-controlled Palestine and in various Arab countries was a somewhat larger number of Jews who emigrated from Arab countries to the Jewish State in the first years of its existence.

Thus the Middle East saw, at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, what amounted to a population exchange between the Arabs who left Israel and the Jews who emigrated there from the various Arab countries. These two phenomena are bound together historically, politically, and ethically, and we cannot deal with one problem (and its solution) without the other, although one of the problems has virtually been solved.

The Jewish refugees never received any compensation from the Arab countries they were forced to leave and which confiscated all their property when they fled. Nevertheless, their social and economic absorption in Israel is a fait accompli, since this absorption was the clear desire and goal of the Jews of Israel and their government. In theory and in practice, these immigrants were never treated as refugees but rather as fellow members of the same people. With a sense of common national fate, rescue and assistance were extended to the immigrants, and the Jews of Israel granted the newcomers the same rights they themselves enjoyed. Such was not the attitude toward the Arab refugees from Israel in most of the Arab world.

Jordanian King Hussein described this attitude in an interview with an Associated Press correspondent in January 1960: "Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner. They have not looked into the future. They have no plan or approach. They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, criminal."

Hussein is perhaps the only Arab leader who had the right to express such judgment. His artificial country, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which is in reality 77% of the "Mandate for Palestine", is the only one of the Arab states which not only granted the Palestinian refugees citizenship, but also absorbed them socially, economically, and politically, allowing them to work and become integrated into all aspects of the national life. The attitude of the other Arab states toward the Palestinian Arab refugees was, as noted, completely different. This attitude was succinctly described by Ralph Galloway, a former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, capital of Jordan, in August 1958: quote:-

"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die." Unquote...

In a study of the refugee problems by the British writers Terrence Prittie and Bernard Dineen (The Double Exodus: A Study of Arab and Jewish Refugees in the Middle East), this aspect of the problem was summarized as follows: "In general, one can say that Arab governments regarded the destruction of the State of Israel as a more pressing matter than the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian bitterness and anger had to be kept alive. It was clear that this could ensuring that a great many Palestinians Arabs continued to live under sub-normal conditions, the victims of hunger and poverty, do best. No Arab Government preached this as a defined policy; most Arab Governments tacitly put it into practice."

Jewish refugees from Arab states campaign for recognition

Jewish refugees from Arab states campaign for recognition


World Jewish groups began a global campaign yesterday calling for recognition of Jews from Arab countries as refugees in the Middle East conflict.

"The world sees the plight of Palestinian refugees, and not withstanding their plight, there must be recognition that Jews from Arab countries are also victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).

JJAC, a U.S.-based coalition of Jewish organizations, is one of the groups coordinating the campaign, which aims to record testimonies of Jews who fled in the face of persecution, list asset losses and lobby foreign governments on their behalf.

Jewish groups have estimated that since 1948 at least 900,000 Jews have been forced to leave their homes in Arab countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

At least 600,000 went to Israel. The rest sought sanctuary in France, Britain, the United States and other countries.

A meeting of Jewish groups in Jerusalem yesterday marked the first concerted effort to put the issue on the world agenda.

Linda Abdel Aziz, who fled to Israel in 1971, is one of many thousands of Jews born in Iraq who left or were expelled as conditions deteriorated due to discriminatory legislation, pogroms and public executions.

Abdel Aziz has recorded her testimony in the campaign. Her father, Jacob, who stayed behind in Iraq, disappeared in 1972, and family members believe he was executed by the ruling Baath party regime for being a Jew.

"We did not interfere in politics but we were persecuted. We are all haunted," said Abdel Aziz, 56.

Long history

Jewish communities in the Middle East stretch back over 2,500 years. But anti-Jewish violence, fanned by Arab nationalism, swept through the region in the early 1940s. A wave of pogroms against Jews was triggered by the establishment of Israel in 1948 and a war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became the Jewish state.

After 1948, conditions deteriorated for Jews in many Arab countries, including property confiscation by Arab governments.

The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, another body spearheading the new campaign, has estimated that Jews lost more than $100 billion in personal and community assets through confiscations by various Arab governments.

No concerted effort

While some individuals have tried to file suits for lost property, particularly in Libya and Iraq, there has so far not been a concerted effort by Jewish groups to seek reparations.

JJAC is working in tandem with the Justice Ministry, which is collecting and registering testimonials, affidavits and property claims. The ministry has already received thousands of claims.

"With memories fading, and elderly people passing on each day, this will be our last, best chance to obtain this important record of Jewish history and the evidence for future claims," Urman said.

Any future claims are complicated by the fact that the departure of Jews from Arab states happened alongside the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Millions of Palestinians who fled themselves or are descended from those who left their homes behind demand a "right of return" to what is now Israel or at least compensation for their losses. Most live in Arab states neighboring Israel.

"If there will be compensation for Palestinian refugees, there must be compensation for Jewish refugees," Urman said.

Abbas Shiblak, a British-based Palestinian writer and author of a book on the Jews of Iraq, said their plight should not be compared with the Palestinian refugee issue. "Their (Middle Eastern Jews') rights should be addressed and discussed with each of the concerned Arab states with the help of the international community and only after a comprehensive peace settlement is agreed," Shiblak said.