News
The Forgotten Refugees
By David G. Littman
December 6th, 2002
Last Thursday, a new terrorist group calling itself, ‘The
Government of Universal Palestine, the Army of Palestine’
claimed responsibility for a murderous jihadist terror attack
against Kenyans and Israelis in Kilambala, Kenya. The attacks
were timed to mark the eve of the anniversary of the November
29, 1947 decision by the United Nations to partition Palestine
and allow the creation of the Jewish state.
The next day, in New York and Geneva, the United Nations
hosted its annual ‘International Day of Solidarity
with the Palestinian People’ - without a hitch.
Amid this on-going savagery and carnage worldwide, some
basic truths need to be reaffirmed about the Middle East
tragedy. Aside from the thorny Jerusalem issue, the major
stumbling block has always been the question of the return
of ˜or compensation for˜ Arab refugees from Palestine
in 1948 and 1967. But Israel's steadfast refusal by the
Arab Palestinian leadership and Arab countries since the
1920s also led to another great refugee tragedy.
In 1945 there were about 140,000 Jews in Iraq; 60,000 in
Yemen and Aden; 35,000 in Syria; 5,000 in Lebanon; 90,000
in Egypt; 60,000 in Libya; 150,000 in Algeria; 120,000 in
Tunisia; and 300,000 in Morocco, including Tangiers. That
comes to a total of about 960,000 - and more than 200,000
in Iran and Turkey.
Jordan covered 78% of Palestine as designated by the League
of Nations in 1922. Turning a blind eye to article 15 of
the League of Nations Mandate, Great Britain decided in
1922 that no Jews would be authorized either to reside or
buy land in what was now the Emirate of TransJordan. This
decision was ratified by the Kingdom of Jordan in its Law
No. 6, sect. 3, of April 3, 1954 (re-activated in Law no.
7, sect. 2, of April 1 1963), which states that any person
may become a citizen of Jordan if he is not a Jew. Even
when Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994, this Judenrein
legislation remained.
In these ancient Jewish communities, which date from Biblical
times, less than 40,000 Jews remain today - and in the Arab
world there are fewer than 5,000, one-half of one percent
of their number at the end of World War II.
During the 20th century, thousands of Jewish men, women,
and children, young and old, were brutally massacred in
the Maghreb, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Aden - even
under French and British colonial rule - and also in Palestine
after the British conquest and during the Mandate (1918-48).
As to why and how these countries became Judenrein (“cleansed"
of Jews), the heading of an article from the New York Times
of May 16, 1948 ˜a day after Israel declared its independence˜
says it all: "Jews in Grave Danger in all Moslem Lands.
Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of Their
Foes".
On January 18, 1948, the President of the World Jewish
Congress, Dr. Stephen Wise, appealed to U.S. Secretary of
State George Marshall: "Between 800,000 and a million
Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, exclusive of Palestine,
are in 'the greatest danger of destruction' at the hands
of Moslems being incited to holy war over the Partition
of Palestine ... Acts of violence already perpetrated, together
with those contemplated, being clearly aimed at the total
destruction of the Jews, constitute genocide, which under
the resolutions of the General Assembly is a crime against
humanity."
Already in Iraq (1936 and 1941), Syria (1944-45), Egypt
and Libya (1945), and Aden (1947) ˜all before the state
of Israel's founding˜ murderous attacks had killed
and wounded thousands. Here is a description from the official
report in 1945 by Tripoli's Jewish community President,
Zachino Habib, describing what happened to Libyan Jews in
Tripoli, Zanzur, Zawiya, Casabat, Zitlin, Nov. 4-7, 1945:
"The Arabs attacked Jews in obedience to mysterious
orders. Their outburst of bestial violence has no plausible
motive. For fifty hours they hunted men down, attacked houses
and shops, killed men, women, old and young, horribly tortured
and dismembered Jews isolated in the interior... In order
to carry out the slaughter, the attackers used various weapons:
knives, daggers, sticks, clubs, iron bars, revolvers, and
even hand grenades."
A recent example of such murderous acts was seen on April
11, 2002 when the jihadist bombing of the ancient al-Ghariba
synagogue of Djerba in Tunisia killed 17 and badly wounding
many others, most of them elderly German tourists. A spokesman
for al Qaeda claimed they had been behind the bombing. Now
Tunisia's remaining Jewish community will seek security
in Israel and elsewhere - like 99% of their co-religionists
before them.
Pogroms and persecutions, and grave fears for their future,
regularly preceded the mass expulsions and exoduses of the
Jews, whose ancestors had inhabited these regions from time
immemorial, a millennium and more before the successive
waves of Arab conquest and occupation from the 7th century.
Beginning in 1948, more than 650,000 of these Oriental Jewish
refugees were integrated into Israel - even as the country
was being threatened with annihilation by neighbouring Arab
League states, which, for over 40 years, refused the U.N.'s
1947 Palestine Partition Plan. Approximately 300,000 more
Jews found refuge, and a new homeland, in Europe and the
Americas.
Roughly half of Israel's 5 million Jews - from a population
of 6.2 million, of whom roughly 20% are Arab, Druze, and
Bedouin Israelis - is now composed of those refugees and
their descendants, who received no humanitarian aid from
the United Nations, and who indeed did not ask for it. It
was Jews worldwide, just emerging from the Shoah, who worked
together with Israel to achieve this integration.
Yet it was this defiance of international legality by the
Arab League in 1947-1948 ˜maintained decade after decade
in unsuccessful attempts at politicide˜ that led to
the on-going Arab-Palestinian catastrophe. A parallel commitment
on behalf of the less numerous Arab refugees of Palestine
(in 1948 they numbered about 550,000, although a figure
of 750,000 is often claimed) for their integration into
some of the 21 Arab states (covering 10% of the world's
land surface) was considered too great a symbolic and monetary
sacrifice, even despite their immense oil resources.
George Orwell's remark about everyone being equal ˜but
some being more equal than others˜ could well be applied
to refugees since the 1940s: apparently some refugees are
considered more equal than others. But the forgotten million
- Jewish refugees from Arab lands - were not helped by the
U.N., nor were they kept for over half a century in refugee
camps, breeding hopelessness, frustration, and - under U.N.
auspices - a culture of hate and death, in which jihadist
bombers thrive today.
The transfer of populations on a large scale, as a consequence
of war or for political reasons, has always been a characteristic
of human history, particularly in the Islamic Orient. Deportations,
expropriations and expulsions of dhimmis ˜ Jews, Christians,
and other indigenous peoples, recurred throughout the long
history of dhimmitude, including in Palestine. One should
question today the real motivation of a selective, historically
flawed memory which systematically spotlights the Arab-Palestinian
refugees ˜suffering from the Arab League's own policy˜
but conveniently forgets the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967
- also adamantly refused then by the Khartoum Arab League
Summit Conference with the formula: "No peace with
Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel,
no concessions on the questions of Palestinian national
rights" refers to "a just solution to the refugee
problem". This term applied implicitly also to Jewish
refugees from Arab countries who had been obliged to seek
security outside their native lands, and not only to the
Arab-Palestinian refugees who are not specifically referred
to in the resolution.
The dire hardships endured by the great majority of the
Jewish refugees from Arab countries have never been considered
by the United Nations, nor has the loss of their inestimable
properties and heritage dating back over 3,000 years. The
time has surely come for this great injustice to be addressed
seriously, within the context of a just and equitable global
solution to the on-going Middle East tragedy, once the Palestinian
leadership ends its jihad war of attrition and takes the
democratic path to peace.
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