Peace Means Justice for the million Jewish Refugees from Arab lands JONATHAN S. TOBIN

Peace Means Justice for the million Jewish Refugees from Arab lands

 JONATHAN S. TOBIN / SEPT. 21, 2012

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The tragic fate of Arab-Palestinian refugees has always loomed over the Middle East conflict. The descendants of those who fled the territory of the newborn state of Israel in 1948 have been kept stateless and dependent on United Nations charity rather than being absorbed into other Arab countries so as to perpetuate the war to extinguish the Jewish state. The refugees and those who purport to advocate for their interests have consistently sought to veto any peace plans that might end the struggle between Israelis and Arab-Palestinians. They have refused to accept any outcome that did not involve their “return” to what is now Israel, an idea that is tantamount to the destruction of Israel. The Arab-Palestinians have gotten away with this irresponsible behavior because they retained the sympathy of a world that saw them as the sole victims of Israel’s War of Independence. But the historical truth is far more complex.

Far from 1948 being a case of a one-sided population flight in which Arab-Palestinians left what is now Israel (something that most did voluntarily as they sought to escape the war or because they feared what would happen to them in a Jewish majority state), what actually occurred was a population exchange. At the same time that hundreds of thousands of Arabs left the Palestine Mandate at the request of the Arab armies, over 900 hundred thousand Jews living in the Arab and Muslim world for over 2,900 years began to be forcefully pushed out of their homes and all their assets confiscated. (Jordan also expelled all the Jews and confiscated their assets). The story of the over a million Jewish refugees has rarely been told in international forums or the mainstream media but it got a boost today when the first United Nations Conference on the million Jews expelled from Arab Countries was held at the world body’s New York headquarters. While Arab-Palestinian refugees deserve sympathy and perhaps some compensation in any agreement that would finally end the conflict, so, too, do the descendants of the million Jews who lost their homes and all their assets. As Danny Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister rightly said today:

We will not arrive at peace without solving the refugee problem – but that includes the million Jewish refugees. Justice does not lie on just one side and equal measures must be applied to both.

It is true that the descendants of the Jewish refugees are not still living in camps waiting for new homes. Though the process was not without its problems, rather than abuse those Jews who were forcefully dispossessed and using them as political props as the Arabs did, the over a million Jewish refugees from the Arab world found homes and lives in Israel and the West with the help of their brethren. But that does not diminish their right to compensation or a fair hearing for their grievances.

The truth about the over a million Jewish refugees is something that foreign cheerleaders for the Arab-Palestinians as well as the Arab nations who took part in the forced expulsion have never acknowledged, let alone refuted. As Ron Prosor, Israel’s UN ambassador, pointed out in his speech at the conference, what occurred after Israel’s birth was nothing less than a campaign aimed at eliminating ancient Jewish communities that existed for over 2,800 years. Arab leaders “launched a war of terror, incitement, and forced expulsion to decimate and destroy their Jewish communities. Their effort was systematic. It was deliberate. It was planned.”

Indeed, not only did Jews lose trillions of dollars in property but were deprived of property that amounts to a land mass that is six times the size of the state of Israel.

This is something that a lot of people, especially those to whom the peace process with the Arab-Palestinians has become an end unto itself don’t want to hear about. They believe that the putting forward of Jewish claims from 1948 is merely an obstacle to negotiations. But such arguments are absurd. Peace cannot be built merely by appeasing the Arab-Palestinian claim to sole victimhood. Just as the dispute over territory is one between two peoples with claims, so, too is the question of refugee compensation. Peace cannot be bought by pretending that only Arab-Palestinians suffered or that only Arabs have rights. Indeed, such a formulation is a guarantee that the struggle will continue indefinitely since the Arab-Palestinians are encouraged to think that they are the only ones with just claims.

For far too long the conflict between Israelis and Arab-Palestinians has been cast as one pitting the security of the former against the rights of the latter. Framed this way, it is no surprise that the more emotional appeals of the Arab-Palestinians have often prevailed over the arguments of Israelis. Rather than asserting their historic rights, the Jews have often allowed themselves to be cast in the false role of colonial oppressor. The Arab-Palestinian pose as the only victims of the war enables them to evade their historic responsibility for both the creation of a refugee problem in 1948 as well as their refusal to accept Israeli peace offers and concessions.

Let’s hope today’s conference is the beginning of a serious debate about the issue as well as a turning point in discussions about Middle East peace. Peace requires respect for the rights of the over a million Jewish refugees as well as those of the Arab-Palestinians.

Dershowitz weighs in, but media stay mum

Adding his considerable weight to the campaign for Jewish refugees, leading lawyer Alan Dershowitz (pictured) has been writing in Haaretz: there he challenges Hanan Ashrawi, and others who dispute that Jews in Arab countries were indeed refugees, to a public debate. When Dershowitz sneezes, the mainstream media rushes in to write about it. But apart from an article in The Washington Times, the US press and media, says the watchdog CAMERA (see link below), have been curiously silent about Israel's historic UN meeting on Jewish refugees on 21 September. (With thanks: Lily)

Historical evidence conclusively establishes that the forced exile of Jews from Arab countries was part of a general plan to punish Jews in retaliation for the establishment of Israel.  There were organized pogroms against Jewish citizens.  Jewish leaders were hanged.  Jewish synagogues were torched.  Jewish bank accounts and other property were confiscated.  Jews remained in Arab lands at risk to their lives.

Yet Hanan Ashrawi and others dispute the applicability of the label of “refugee” to these Jews.  Their argument is that since they are not seeking a right to return to their native lands, they do not qualify as refugees.  Under that benighted definition, Jews who escaped from Germany and Poland in the early 1940s would not have been considered refugees, since they had no interest in returning to Berlin or Oświęcim.

In 1967, the United Nations’ Security Council took a different view of this matter.  I know, because I worked with Justice Arthur Goldberg, who was then the permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations, on the wording of Security Council Resolution 242, on which the Middle East peace process has long relied.  That resolution dealt with the refugee problem.  The Soviet Union introduced a draft which would have limited the definition of refugee to Palestinian refugees.  The United States, speaking through Justice Goldberg, insisted that attention must be paid to Jewish refugees as well.  The American view prevailed and the resulting language referred to a “just settlement of the refugee problem.”  Justice Goldberg explained:  “The Resolution addresses the objective of ‘achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.’ This language presumably refers to both Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars.”

Accordingly, the Jewish and Arab refugees have equal status under international law.  There is now pending in Congress H.R. 6242, a law which would grant Jewish refugees from Arab countries equal status under American law.  The time has now come, indeed it is long overdue, for these refugee problems to be granted equal status in the court of public opinion, and in the realm of morality.

If Hanan Ashrawi really believes that Jews who were forced to leave their homes are not refugees, let her defend her views in a public forum.  I hereby challenge her to a debate on that issue.

If there are those who doubt the historical accuracy of the Jewish refugee narrative, let an international commission of objective historians take testimony from living refugees.  Indeed, it would be useful for an archive now to be created of such testimonies, since many of those who were forced to flee from Arab lands are now aging.

There are some who argue that the issue of Jewish refugees is a makeweight being put forward by cynical Israeli politicians to blunt the impact of the Palestinian refugee narrative.  But this is not a new issue.  I and many others have long been concerned about this issue.  Since 1967, I have consulted with Iranian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Libyan families who lost everything—life, property and their original homeland—as the result of a concerted effort by Arab and Muslim governments.  What is cynical is any attempt to deflect attention from the real injustices that were suffered, and continue to be suffered, by hundreds of thousands of Jews and their families just because they were Jews who were born in Arab lands.

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Where's the coverage, asks the media-monitoring blog CAMERA: 

On September 21, 2012, Israel hosted an event at the United Nationshighlighting the stories of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries in the last century. What? You thought all refugees in the Arab-Israeli conflict were Palestinian Arabs? Nope.

The event, "Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries," featured firsthand accounts from Jewish refugees, along with remarks by Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israel's UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. Normally, when Alan Dershowitz sneezes, there's an article in the press. He's been mentioned in The New York Times on literally thousands of occasions.

But, when Israel tries to tell the story of the 850,000 Jews living in Arab countries who were dispossessed and forced out between 1947 and 1972, there is virtual media silence.

While CAMERA has covered the story of Jewish refugees from Arab countries extensively (see here, here, here, and here), few major media outlets cover the issue and fewer covered the symposium. There was an article in The Washington Times but, other than that, only Jewish and Israeli media covered the meeting.


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The media in disarray over Jewish refugees

Whatever else you might say about Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s campaign for recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, he has certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The Arab press and media are in disarray; the campaign has brought forth what Ayalon has termed “extreme and babbling responses” from the Arab-Palestinian leadership.

Last week’s “Justice for Jews from Arab Countries“ conference in Jerusalem, staged by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in association with the World Jewish Congress (WJC), made history: it was the first official attempt in 64 years to introduce the plight of 850,000 Jewish refugees into mainstream public discourse. On September 21, the scene shifts to New York, when Danny Ayalon, WJC President Ron Lauder and leading lawyer Alan Dershowitz will call for UN recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Reactions so far in the mainstream media range from bewilderment to hysteria. The campaign is a “cynical manipulation.” It’s about talking points, political point-scoring, “hasbara.”

In other words, the involvement of the Israeli MFA has raised the media’s worst suspicions. Haaretz and The Daily Telegraph report that the Israeli government is obeying a recommendation of the Israeli National Security Council. It’s a premeditated strategy. It’s a stumbling block to peace, proof of the Israeli government’s ‘insincerity’, an excuse to avoid a peace settlement even when peace talks are not going on. (Naturally, perpetuating Palestinian refugee status down through the generations is not political. And the Palestinian insistence on their “right of return” to Israel is not a stumbling block to peace. )

The Jewish refugees campaign has been referred to as a tactic intended to deflect attention from Israel’s African refugees crisis, according to Shayna Zamkanei, or divert public opinion from Israeli “discrimination” against Sephardim, according to Sigal Samuel. (You know, discrimination is that thing which makes every Sephardi girl reach for her hair-straightening tongs in order to look like her Ashkenazi friends.)

Much Arab criticism has claimed that Jews from Arab countries were not refugees at all. If they were, they would assert a “right of return” of their own to their countries of birth. Since they are now in their homeland of Israel, their aspirations have been fulfilled (Radical Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has now jumped on this bandwagon). Blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman calls this vain attempt to “dezionize” Israel an own goal: Ironically, Hanan Ashrawi’s logic is a ringing endorsement of Zionism for the 650,000 Jews who did resettle in Israel.

A ringing endorsement for Zionism. Hanan Ashrawi (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

For Hussein Ibish (ably challenged by Ben Cohen), the very fact that the Jews are not asking for a “right of return” makes their campaign for justice “hollow.” They have no substantive claims, he alleges – barring a desire to delegitimise the Palestinian “right of return.”

According to Canadian refugee rights lawyer David Matas, however, you can’t both claim to be a refugee and assert a “right of return.” “The very assertion of a ‘right of return’ is an acknowledgement that the conditions which led to refugee status no longer hold sway,” he told last week’s conference. Needless to say, the conditions in almost all Arab countries remain as hostile and unsafe for Jews – if not more so — as on the day they fled.

What the Jewish refugee issue does is to remove a stumbling block to peace by pricking the bubble of Palestinian exceptionalism. If one set of refugees from the conflict has been shown to have been absorbed without fuss, what does it say about the other?

Others on the Israeli left have objected to the linkage of the two sets of refugees. One Almog Behar, a young Israeli-born poet, has popped up on Facebook to speak on behalf of an unheard-of committee of Iraqi and Kurdish Jews in Ramat Gan against “renewed Israeli government propaganda efforts to counter Palestinian refugee rights by using the claims of Jews who left Arab countries in the 1950s.” Clutching at Behar’s straw, an Iraqi newspaper is now reporting that Iraqi Jews refuse to be associated with the “file on Palestinian refugees.”

For leftist Larry Derfner, the Israeli campaign is not content with seeking parity — it is going for superiority. Derfner contends that the Israeli government’s “splashy new victimhood campaign” engenders a tawdry suffering contest.

Leftist blogger Kung Fu Jew charges:

I would think that Jews of Arab origin would be outraged that their dispossession is again raised only as a talking point against Palestinian refugees.

Well actually, Jews from Arab countries are thrilled that their issue is finally being pushed to the fore. In much of the sniping at Ayalon’s campaign, there is sneering contempt; not compassion for Jewish refugees, nor appreciation for their human rights, from people who only seem to care about Palestinian rights. Under human rights law, Jewish refugees do have substantive claims for which there is no statute of limitations – to remembrance, recognition and redress, a notion that includes compensation.

The biggest obstacle to this campaign seems not the foreign or leftist press but mind-numbing ignorance among Israeli Jews. According to a poll released by the WJC to coincide with the international conference, 54% of Israeli Arabs are more likely to link Jewish refugees from Arab countries with Palestinians displaced from Israel, compared to only 48% of Israeli Jews. Even more worrying, 96% of the Jewish population was found to have no knowledge of the issue, compare to 89% of Israeli Arabs.

Danny Ayalon, you have an uphill struggle ahead – to educate your own.

Jews deserve justice too

The U.N. and the U.S., with the help of the Arab League, are perpetuating the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem — a perfect tool with which to bash Israel. On the opposite side, shockingly and hypocritically, no one gives a second to the 990,000 Jews who were forcefully displaced from Arab countries by means of violence, looting, threats and murder.

Dror Eydar

Jewish Immigrants from Arab countries in the early days of Israel's history. 

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Photo: GPO

Immigrants from Arab countries in the early days of Israel's history.  | Photo: GPO

At the beginning of the week I had the chance to take part in a rare historic event: the first official conference on the issue of Jewish refugees, held under the auspices of Israel's Foreign Ministry in cooperation with the World Jewish Congress. The international conference was titled "Justice for Jewish Refugees From Arab Countries." For the first time in decades, the call for justice for the Jewish people was once again heard in Jerusalem. Not just a call for security, or apologetic Israeli discourse in the face of Palestinian calls for so-called justice, but a clear call, by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to bring the issue of the million Jewish refugees back into every international arena: the ethical, legal, diplomatic and political arenas.

As one of the conference participants, former Canadian Minister of Justice Professor Irwin Cotler, said: ?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 ? which we all seek.? Indeed, this is a serious issue that has been neglected and kept silent for years, in stark contrast with the Arab-Palestinian refugee issue, which has become self evident and universally recognized in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians have become experts at marketing their victimhood to the world, and thus, the concept of a ?just solution? became unilaterally linked to the Arab-Palestinian narrative. But just like every aspect of the Middle East story, here, too, the truth is far more complex.

With the exception of a few years prior to World War I, the Arabs living in this region never accepted the Jewish presence here. They rejected the various partition plans, ranging from the Peel Commission in 1937, through the 1947 Partition Plan, to the Oslo Accords and other generous Israeli offers. They were always willing to accept land, but never to sign a final agreement that would spell the end of the conflict.

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In Nov. 1948, the U.N. appointed a task force to coordinate humanitarian aid work for Arab-Palestinian refugees. A short time later, the U.N.?s Economic Survey Mission issued its recommendation to resolve the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem by resettling them in Arab countries and integrating them in industry and agriculture there. That is how the United Nations Relief and Works Agency came about. Obviously, the plan never came to fruition, because the Arab countries refused to naturalize the Arab-Palestinian refugees. They were tasked with being the eternal victims ? a means to bash Israel.

The Twentieth Century saw millions upon millions of refugees, products of various wars. Population changes occurred in many places around the globe. Millions of Sikhs and Hindus, for example, were displaced from Pakistan to India in the 1950's, and millions of Muslims, meanwhile, took the opposite route. This population exchange involved a lot of violence, but ultimately, it happened. Incidentally, then-Pakistani President Mohammad Ayub Khan visited Cairo in 1960 and voiced hope during a press conference there that the fact that his country absorbed some seven million refugees from India would serve as an example to Arab countries to absorb 750,000 Arab-Palestinian refugees.

But the status of Arab-Palestinian refugees is unlike the status of any other kind of refugee. The U.N. has two agencies that deal with refugees: the UNHCR which handles all the refugees in the world, and a refugee agency just for the Arab-Palestinians: UNRWA.

The U.N. also has two different definitions of refugee status: one is a general definition assigning refugee status to "people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who, for persecution related reasons, are unable or unwilling to return home." This definition affords refugee status for a limited number of years, and only to the displaced persons themselves, not their offspring. Under this definition, refugee status is revoked when a displaced person settles in, and integrates into another country. But not so when it comes to Arab-Palestinian refugees.

A Arab-Palestinian refugee is defined as ?anyone whose normal place of residence was in Mandate Palestine during the period from June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." In short, anyone who lived here for two years prior to the establishment of the State of Israel is considered a Arab-Palestinian refugee who lived here ?for thousands of years? since the biblical Jebusites ... And incidentally, only Palestinian refugee status can be passed down from generation to generation. Most of UNRWA?s budget comes from the U.S. and the EU, both of which are pushing Israel to resume negotiations with the Arab-Palestinians but are simultaneously helping to perpetuate the conflict.

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Opposite the 500,000 or 600,000 Arab-Palestinian refugees, there are more than 990,000 Jewish refugees who were forcibly expelled from Arab countries over the establishment of the State of Israel and its victory in the 1948 War of Independence.

The Arab countries are ultimately responsible for creating the refugee problem, both the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem that resulted from a war waged by Arab countries against Israel, and the Jewish refugee problem, by stripping Jews of their citizenships, confiscating their property, murdering many of them and violently expelling the rest from the places they had populated for 2,700 years. All this, some 1,200 years before the rise of Islam.

It is important to get familiar with the testimonies of Jewish refugees. A good starting point is a website called The Forgotten Million, operated by the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries. These Jews also lived in refugee camps for a time: the Israeli maabarot (refugee absorption camps). But, as opposed to the Arab-Palestinian refugee camps, the tents in the maabarot eventually became shacks, which then became permanent housing and ultimately cities.

And so, in stark contrast with the U.N.-fueled eternal refugee-hood of the Arab-Palestinians, these Jewish refugees integrated into their old-new homeland and were no longer of any interest to anyone. The term "pogrom" was seen as referring to violence only European Jews were subjected to. Furthermore, as Cotler mentioned, in the case of Arab Jews, the violence, the loss of citizenship, the theft of property and the expulsion reflected the stated policy of the Arab League, which had suggested a similar course of action against Jewish nationals back in 1947.

Now that the issue has gotten official state recognition, Israel?s representatives should raise the issue of Jewish refugees at every diplomatic event, and demand that justice be done. More than 150 resolutions having to do with Arab-Palestinian refugees have been adopted by the U.N. Not one has to do with their Jewish counterparts. It is time to change all that. By the way, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 talks about a ?just settlement of the refugee problem? ? all refugees, including the Jewish ones.

And one more interesting historical note: the same thing that happened to the Jews half a century ago is currently happening before our very eyes to Christians living in Arab countries. The Christians of the Middle East are being persecuted, murdered and expelled. There is only one country in the Middle East where Christians thrive: Israel. That is an important public diplomacy tool.

But not only for diplomacy, it is also important for the sake of education. Every Israeli needs this. Without recognition of the Jewish ?nakba? (the term Palestinians use to describe the catastrophe of their expulsion from Palestine), as some Jewish survivors describe their past, the resulting vacuum will have room only for the Arab-Palestinian version. ?And you shall tell your son ...? as the Bible says.