WASHINGTON – A first-of-its-kind event focusing on Jewish refugees who fled Arab countries was launched Friday at the United Nations headquarters in New York, despite strong Arab pressure.
After an Arab demand to call off the event was rejected, the Arab League asked the UN Secretariat for permission to hand out press releases at the entrance to the Israeli event , but that request was turned down as well.
The Palestinian UN observer emailed reporters covering the organization on Thursday night, and attached an article published by senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi on the Huffington Post, in which she accuses Israel of cynically using the term “refugee”.
The event, initiated by the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli delegation to the UN, is being broadcast live on the UN Web TV channel under the title: “The Untold Story of the Middle East: Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.”
It is attended by senior UN Secretariat officials, as well as Western ambassadors.
Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, who led the battle to recognize Jewish refugees, said that it was a historical event.
“Between the walls of the UN we are starting to bring justice to the Jewish refugees who were tortured, persecuted and driven away, and whose rights were revoked,” he said.
Ayalon stressed that Security Council Resolution 242 discusses justice for refugees in the Middle East, thanks to the fact that then-American Ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg rejected a Soviet demand to include the phrase “Arab refugees” in the wording.
“We are 64 years late, but it’s never too late to bring justice and discuss the historic facts,” he added.
‘Set the record straight’
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said: “Israel’s detractors have spent decades infusing the courts of international public opinion with a one-sided history of the Middle East refugee problem. This will not bring justice or closure to this painful conflict.
“It is now time to set the historical, diplomatic, and legal record straight. Lasting peace can only be built on historical facts – both the issues of the Jewish refugees and the Palestinian refugees must be addressed.”
“It is time for the international community to recognize that with the birth of the Jewish state in 1948, Jews in Arab countries were persecuted, assaulted and forcibly exiled from their homes, personal and communal property confiscated and stolen.
“The world has long recognized the Palestinian refugee problem. After 60 years, the United Nations should finally recognize the 850,000 Jewish refugees who suffered during those times.
“The World Jewish Congress calls upon the Secretary General of the United Nations and all world leaders to acknowledge the truth, and place the plight of the Jewish refugees of Arab countries on the agenda together with the rights of all the refugees. Only addressing the historical facts can help bring about peace,” said Lauder.
The conference is also attended by Jewish refugees from Arab countries, including Rabbi Eli Abadi who was born in Beirut, Edwin Shuker of Baghdad, and journalist Shalom Yerushalmi, whose parents were forced to leave their property in Damascus and flee with nothing.
Other participants include Law Professors Irwin Cotler and Alan Dershowitz, who discussed the legal rights of Jews who escaped from Arab countries.
@ Andrew:
Barak like Sharon were pathological killers, egomaniacs with a strong dose paranoia. When they can’t kill Arabs they turn their moribid attention to and on the Jews.
Notice the timing? It’s a distraction for their inaction against Iran.
@ Donald freyman:
I thought you were babara and celia? You do better in the feminine gender. Suits you. Remember diving for the sailors fly?
@ yamit82:
@ Shy Guy:
@ rongrand:
BINGO
@ yamit82:
Yamit- I am not who you all think I am.
And by the way. As I was walking up the stairs………..
@ yamit82:
@ Shy Guy:
@ Andrew:
Maybe I should start over.
Shy Guy Said:
Actually, I’m beginning to think that this guy is h-mie.
@ rongrand:
🙁
It is painful to see how poorly and fitfully this issue has been raised. It should have been in the forefront from the very beginning, 1948 if not earlier. The number of Jewish refugees was much greater than the number of Arab ones, and even more vastly larger if one defines Arab refugees in honest terms rather than the bizarre UN terms. The Jews were genuine refugees; most of the Arabs were not; and left as the result of the Arab community’s own agression. The wealth ripped off from the Jewish refugees was vastly greater than that lost by the Arabs, and the latter should be compensated by the Arab aggressors who caused them to leave.
It is also useful to remind ourselves, as well as the world, that Israel exists as a refuge from oppression by Muslims, not just Europeans…
@ Bernard Ross: You refer to the concept of the original “owner of the yard.” In this connection, I think it is key to recall that, in each and every year across the centuries, there have always been some Jews living in Eretz Israel. We need to highlight the aboriginal rights of the Jewish People to its ancestral homeland. And, in this regard, see http://www.allenzhertz.com for an October 2011 posting entitled “Jewish Aboriginal Right to Israel.” There, I argue that the Jewish People has aboriginal rights to Eretz Israel (both sides of the Jordan River) in the same way that the Greek People has aboriginal rights to Greece and the native Peoples of the Americas have aboriginal rights to their tribal lands. There are three distinct types of rights which the Jewish People has in connection with all or part of Eretz Israel. First, there are aboriginal rights dating from the 6th century BCE birth of the Jewish People there. Second, at the very least from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, there are treaty rights arising from a series of declarations, resolutions and treaties from 1917 to 1922, subsequently blessed by the Lausanne Treaty with the Turkish Republic as successor to the Ottoman Empire. Third, the Jewish People has self-determination rights with regard to the territory which they currently inhabit. Jewish aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights interact in a variety of ways, including with respect to the self-determination rights of the newborn (circa 1960 CE) Palestinian People. Because Jews have a right to stay alive in their ancestral homeland, required is a peaceful process for the reconciliation of rights that fully respects the dignity of both the Jewish People and the Palestinian People. To be reconciled are the subsequent self-determination rights of the Palestinian People with Jewish aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights. It would be profoundly immoral and unlawful to realize Palestinian rights in a way that promises to cancel the Jewish People’s aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights. And, that is exactly why any full-and-final peace would have to provide the Jewish People with clear borders, effective security guarantees, and unequivocal recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as “the” Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland. Are you fretting over territorial concessions? Have no fear! A hundred years will pass and the Palestinians will still never agree to the full-and-final peace settlement that I have sketched above.
@ yamit82:
Uncle Nahum you don’t suppose DF is non other than h-mie?
Trust Ted may shed some light on this.
Notice some of the traits.
yamit82 Said:
thank you for the post. I believe the last international, “legally binding” document to this effect was UN Charter article 80. Although I agree with being independent I note that arab, and other countries, are able to accept US aid and still have a great deal more independence than Israel in their policies. Although no easy, I believe that “aid” can be accepted without becoming a vassal. I think it is part of the 2000 year jewish hostage crisis that results in this vassaldom and homage to the lords of the manor. I also dont empathize with a need to deal with the “palestinian” issue as part of Jewish self fulfillment, or justice for the Jews. I see this again as observing the agenda and interests of others. Although, by many, I am considered a facist for my stance on Jewish settlement and unlateral transfer I view transfer as a self preservation during this era. I also see it as less damaging to the arabs than the expulsion of jews from gaza or fromarab lands. I see the transfer as creating facts which would finally enable compensation and resettlement to the arab refugees. You cant keep shouting about Israeli arabs if they are somewhere else. IN the same way that Israel must deal with the arabs today the transferred locations will have to deal with them tomorrow. Once the final destination is clearly seen to be outside of Israel then resettlement can occur from the starting point across the border. I am able to be unemotional on this issue because I am convinced that in this era there cannot be a “living together in the same land” For this to occur the muslims must abandon their jew hatred, raise their children to respect Jews and jewish holy sites, take responsibility for the arab refugee problem they created and pay for it, compensate the jewish refugees,reverse their JEW FREE apartheid areas under their control, etc etc etc. I see no accommodation with a people who maintain JEW FREE areas intentionally, I include in this Jordan, which is a temporary accommodation based in immediate interest only. I will have interest and empathy in the arabs and muslims when they show the same, FIRST, towards the Jews. Their resettlement problem can be easily settled by a redirecting of the funds and energies of the muslim arab nation away from funding terror to resettling their “brothers” The same can be said of everyone else who continues to fund the status quo. Once they trned on the Jews the onus is on them to prove they can be trusted. (please forgive the typos and spelling errors)
Donald freyman Said:
My igure is approx 250,000 out of approx 750,000 to 850k. This large figure constitutes less than 1/3 as opposed to a “vast majority”. Poetic license?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries
@ CuriousAmerican:
The Forgotten Refugees – 1,000,000 Jews Expelled (Part 1)
here is a link to the typical propaganda of the double standard media in The Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/02/exploiting-jews-from-arab-countries.html
This is why Israel, and Jewish organizations, must cease to accept any double standards as they are contributing to the process of hoodwinking Jews by not demanding, and unilaterally seizing, their rights and restoring justice. Every concession done without principle encourages the swindlers to do more swindling. Justice to the Jews is always forgotten but should be least forgotten by the Jews themselves. When Jews forget and concede the world follows suit.
@ yamit82:
the Zionist Freedom Alliance
There is much I disagree with but it was written with Jewish and non Jewish students as their target audiences.
@ Bernard Ross:
Declaration
We, the Zionist Freedom Alliance, declare for all our people and the world to know:
That the Hebrew nation is a proud and ancient Middle Eastern people deserving of freedom, tranquility and self determination within the borders of our ancestral homeland;
That Zionism is the national liberation movement of the ancient Jewish people, born when the Roman Empire invaded our country, destroyed our Temple, uprooted us from our soil and exiled us from our land. Modern Zionism is the external manifestation of our people’s ancient spiritual yearnings and the latter is the light and soul of the former;
That Zionism is a revolution unparalleled by any other in history as no other social, economic or political upheaval has ever attempted to ingather a scattered nation from the ends of the earth, revive a dead language to everyday use and liberate a homeland from under a mighty world empire while at the same time attempting to build a moral society that will set an example of justice for mankind;
That our people were the victims of an historic injustice when we were robbed of our right to land, liberty and peace by Roman imperialists nearly 2,000 ago. This injustice was compounded by a series of atrocities that befell us in the exile and climaxed with a Holocaust that destroyed an entire third of our nation;
That it is by the might of right and not the right of might that the Hebrew nation has returned to our borders and reestablished our national framework therein. The entire territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea belongs rightfully and solely to the Hebrew nation. No foreign ruler can justly claim ownership over our people’s ancestral homeland;
That although our people have succeeded in returning to our borders after a long and brutal exile and liberating our homeland from British rule, the imperialist powers continue their attempts to wrest portions of our country from us;
And therefore, we, the Zionist Freedom Alliance, activists from various ideological backgrounds united in the struggle for historic justice and freedom for our people, adopt this Covenant of Freedom;
And we dedicate ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until our people achieves full national independence, freedom from foreign influences and full sovereignty in the entire territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.
The Hebrew nation is a Middle Eastern nation
The entire Jewish people are indigenous to the Middle East regardless of where individual Jews may have wandered during the past 2,000 years. It was in the Middle East that our nation was forged, emerged from slavery and possessed sovereignty over our homeland. The fact that Jews eventually came to drift and live in other parts of the world was only the result of a crime perpetrated against us by foreign imperialists who invaded our country and exiled us from our land;
The Jewish people are a Semitic people (as are most other indigenous peoples in the Middle East). A prerequisite to achieving peace in our region is the Jewish people returning to our Middle Eastern heritage. Having pride in our authentic Hebrew culture and distancing ourselves from the West and its values will help us to build bridges with the other peoples of the region;
Westernization is one of the leading threats to the Jewish people and State of Israel today. The fact that so many of our youth have been conditioned to see themselves as Westerners and identify with the values and culture of the West is a national tragedy for the Jewish people. In addition to fostering animosity between Jews and our Arab cousins, Westernization has brought assimilation to Israel and weakened the morale of many young Jews susceptible to foreign influences;
The right of our people to the Land of Israel is based firmly on the fact that our people are from the Land of Israel, ruled over the Land of Israel in ancient times and continued to yearn and pray for the Land of Israel even while in exile. The Land of Israel is the only place on earth where the national destiny of the Jewish people can unfold. Jewish history will progress with a focus on the Hebrew nation in our borders. Any Jew wishing to be part of our people’s collective destiny will naturally decide to return home to our native country.
The Hebrew nation has every right to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea
The last legally binding document pertaining to the borders of the Jewish state in our people’s homeland is the League of Nations San Remo Conference’s ratification of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which not only recognizes the national rights of our people to sovereignty over our country but also defines our borders and calls for the reestablishment of a Hebrew political entity therein;
This document does not grant our people a right to our homeland but merely recognizes that historic right and codifies it into international law. Our right to our country transcends the machinations of imperialist powers and their laws and is not dependent upon the acknowledgement or recognition of other peoples;
Judea, Samaria and the Gaza region do not belong to any other sovereign state but are part of the former British Mandate for Palestine and therefore fall legitimately within the State of Israel’s jurisdiction. These lands were “occupied territories” before 1967 and the “occupying powers” had been Jordan and Egypt. Jews have lived in Judea, Samaria and Gaza since ancient times. What many now refer to as the “West Bank” has been the cradle of Hebrew civilization for over 3,000 years;
There is no people in existence other than the Jewish people with a legitimate claim to sovereignty over the Land of Israel. From the time that we were exiled from our soil by the Romans until we returned and liberated our country from British rule, no other native people has had an independent political entity within our borders. Our country was ruled by a series of foreign empires for nearly 2,000 years until we successfully freed it from British occupation;
Like all other indigenous peoples, the Jewish people has a right to self determination in our native land. Any attempt to deny or rob us of our rights to any part of our ancestral homeland is an act of aggression and injustice against our people. We must employ all of our strength and valor to resist attempts by foreign powers to deprive us of what is rightfully ours.
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the ancient Jewish people and a revolution unparalleled by any other in human history
Zionism is the original national liberation movement. Its early expressions appeared among the Hebrew slaves of Egypt, the early judges and kings of Israel and the Judean freedom fighters under the command of Hasmonean priests and Sicarii zealots;
No other liberation movement has ever achieved the beauty and scope of the Zionist Revolution. The spectacle of a people with as long and colorful a history as the Jewish people retuning after nearly 2,000 years of exile to our ancestral homeland and ancient language remains unequalled in the annals of human history;
From the fall of the Bar Kochba revolt against Rome to the establishment of Binyamin Zev Herzl’s political movement, Zionism had been expressed not only in an abstract spiritual form through our national hopes, personal prayers and collective yearnings for a return to the Land of Israel but also through several failed practical attempts to restore Jewish independence in the historic Jewish homeland;
Although there has always been a continuous presence of ethnic Jews in the Land of Israel, Zionism did not successfully develop into its full political expression until the mass return of Jewish exiles back to our homeland. Once the ingathering of the exiles was underway, a new generation of Hebrew rebels arose to liberate the Land of Israel from British rule;
The State of Israel came into being primarily through the efforts of the Hebrew underground, primarily the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), who waged a relentless war for freedom against British imperialism in the Middle East;
The Zionist Revolution did not achieve total victory with the reestablishment of a Hebrew state in the Land of Israel. The State of Israel serves as the first flowering of our people’s redemption and should be viewed as a tool with which to achieve total liberation;
The fronts of the Zionist Revolution today include the struggle against poverty and injustice in Israeli society, the struggle against corruption in our political system, the struggle to keep the Land of Israel free from foreign rule, the struggle against Westernization in the Middle East and the struggle for the Jewish character of the State of Israel;
In its purist form as a national liberation movement, the Zionist Revolution rejects the linear political spectrum. Distinctions between Left and Right, like so many other cultural, economic and ideological distinctions within our society, are a distraction from the true struggle for Hebrew liberation. The Zionist Revolution stands on the pillars of Jewish unity, social justice and the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel;
In addition to resisting constant efforts by the imperialist powers to shrink Israel’s borders, the Zionist Revolution aims to establish a social order founded on the morality and justice of the Prophets where no man will go hungry or unemployed and all live in amity, mutual respect and friendship, setting a utopian example to the whole of mankind.
For the Jewish people to achieve complete national liberation, Zionism must now solve the Middle East conflict and bring the State of Israel towards political independence:
Zionism strives for historic justice and genuine peace between the Hebrew nation and all other indigenous peoples of the Middle East
The Hebrew and Arab nations are both indigenous to the Middle East, descendents of Abraham and share a great deal in common. Our peoples enjoyed relatively good relations until British imperialists – employing their colonialist policy of “divide and rule” – incited local Arabs against our liberation movement and encouraged them to violently attack our people;
The Middle East conflict is not between Jews and Arabs or democracy and terrorism but rather between the indigenous peoples of our region and foreign powers that exploit, arm and fund both native groups while pushing us towards war and trying to impose superficial diplomatic initiatives from above. The political and economic elites of the corporatocracy have an interest in provoking regional conflicts and providing artificial solutions that ultimately further inflame the situation;
“Peace” has become a cynical tool in recent decades for Western governments and multi-national organizations who seek to shrink and weaken the State of Israel. The United States, European Union, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and corporate media all have a hand in exacerbating the Middle East conflict while each pushing an imperialist agenda for the region;
While there has yet to be an objective historical analysis of the claims that Palestinian Arabs constitute a distinct ethnic group and while there is overwhelming evidence that Palestinian national identity was invented as a propaganda weapon to be used in the war against Zionism, millions of people currently regard themselves as part of a Palestinian people and should be accorded recognition based on their self identification;
The struggle for Jewish national rights to the Land of Israel is not exclusive to the struggle to achieve civil rights and human dignity for Palestinians living under Israeli control. While Jewish legal, moral and historic claims to sovereignty between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea are unequalled, the ideal society as envisioned by the Zionist Revolution is one in which all peoples, Jew and non-Jew alike, enjoy personal freedoms and basic rights;
Since the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, ethnic Jews and Palestinians have experienced countless injustices. While both populations have been forcibly segregated, educated against one another and suffered thousands dead in the violence born out Oslo, Palestinians have also been made to endure humiliating checkpoints, intrusive walls and wide-ranging restrictions on their freedom of movement. Jews have meanwhile been victimized by politically motivated house demolitions, mass expulsions of entire communities and a global negation of Jewish national rights;
In order for Jews and Palestinians to achieve genuine peace, both peoples need to recognize the legitimate rights of the other. The historic claims of the Jewish people to self determination between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea cannot conflict with the basic civil rights of Palestinians within that territory;
In addition to behaving as puppet despots for foreign powers, the Western-backed Fatah leaders of the Palestinian Authority abuse and oppress their own people while relentlessly inciting them against the State of Israel. PA controlled schools and media outlets educate the Arab public towards anti-Jewish violence and any local Arab who publicly opposes the PA in its war to annihilate Israel is executed for the stated crime of treason (as is any Arab in Jerusalem, Judea or Samaria who even sells property to a Jew);
All indigenous peoples deserve leadership that represents their interests rather than the interests of the corporatocracy. The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved until Jewish and Arab leaders become accountable to the people they are supposed to represent;
True peace must be based on historic justice and can only be achieved from the bottom up – when people on the grassroots level come together in an attempt to nurture genuine understanding and mutual friendship. This can only occur when the Western powers agree to leave our region alone and allow the indigenous peoples to settle our differences locally.
Zionism seeks complete national independence for the State of Israel
The root cause of most challenges confronting the State of Israel is that the state itself does not enjoy complete political independence;
While the State of Israel should strive to maintain good relations with all other nations, we must be careful not to become too close to any one ally;
A country cannot be politically independent while at the same time being financially dependent on a foreign power. United States foreign aid has been a disaster for the State of Israel, delaying necessary reforms and encouraging wastefulness. US military aid is really just a form of corporate welfare as most of the money must be spent on products made by American corporations;
Only people with a superficial attachment to the State of Israel could defend a situation where our government depends on roughly $3 billion in American aid each year. A true supporter of the Jewish state would want the US to extend the same honest friendship to Israel that America’s founding fathers urged their people to offer all nations. True friendship does not include foreign aid – not to Israel nor to our potential enemies in the Middle East (which taken together receive significantly more money from the US than Israel). Providing money and arms to both the Jewish state and our potential enemies in the region fosters the suspicion that Washington is not a true friend but rather a foreign power hypocritically hedging its bets in the Middle East;
Foreign aid has helped the United States government to continuously infringe on Israel’s political sovereignty. Successive US administrations have placed heavy pressure on our leadership to comply with America’s policy agenda for the Middle East – an agenda that often places Israel in positions of weakness vis-à-vis our neighbors. Using the aid as diplomatic leverage, American officials have succeeded in removing Israeli leaders from power and pressuring others to oppress our people, forcibly expel citizens from their homes and shrink the country’s borders;
In recent years, Israeli prime ministers have begun to view themselves as vassal governors for a foreign power rather than as the heads of an independent state. Instead of acting in the national interest of our people, these leaders often seek American approval for necessary military actions and peace talks with neighboring states. This directly contradicts the essence of Zionism, which states that the Jewish people are responsible for our own national destiny;
US foreign aid has been the leading factor in eroding Israel’s national sovereignty in recent years and when the flow of aid is finally stopped, Israel will once again become an independent country capable of securing the Jewish people’s future in our ancestral homeland.
Let all Hebrews who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:
THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL ISRAEL HAS ATTAINED COMPLETE NATIONAL LIBERATION
Donald freyman Said:
What is more embarassing is how you choose an exception to the rule.
Donald freyman Said:
Is “particularly friendly” an overstatement, perhaps just better is more accurate. Are there full dipplomatic relations? What do these “intact citizens rights” include. http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/02/jews-of-morocco-did-not-disappear.html
Jewish targets have been attacked in Casablanca Attacks in May 2003. King Hassan II’s invitations for Jews to return have not been taken up by the people who emigrated. DUH??????
The vast majority of Jews that departed from Arab lands left from Morocco, whose government has always been particularly friendly with Israel. Morocco’s present policy towards their prior Jewish citizens is that they are free to return to their homeland whenever they wish with all their previous citizen rights intact.
This fact may be embarrassing to Israel’s present position.
Allen Z. Hertz Said:
Well written, and may I add that a Jew from Romania is most likely to have ancestors from the middle east. Further, even if there were no jews in the middle east, their ethnic cleansing cannot itself be a justification for denying their claim. There is a Jamaican patois saying which basically translates as “the owner of the yard is back”, everyone knows who the “yard” belongs to and what the ramifications of the statement are. The Jews must state in Israel the same. Those who have have received stolen property resulting from ethnic cleansing, or squat on the property of the cleansed, cannot be rewarded. Perhaps, in such cases one can look to the South African and Zimbabwean model where the descendants of colonists are now being “murdered” out of their properties in an apparent covert policy(this from the apartheid pontificators). The “colonists” are the arab hordes derivng from, oddly enough, Arabia. Even from there they drove out the Jews(mecca)
@ yamit82:thank you for this post. It is my view that if Israel unilaterally acts on the transfer issue in the same way it did in gaza, or as the arabs did in expelling jews, they can refer all critics to the former precedents set by all the institutions charged under the UN and Geneva Conventions to deal with the issue. A guide for handling acceptable arab resettlement has been established by prior “acceptable” Jewish resettlement. Israel should repudiate all former and continuing double standards as global, legal con artistry and swindling.
CuriousAmerican Said:
You appear to agree with this position, even though left unsaid. This is one of the reasons why Israel must act unilaterally in this issue. The corruption exhibited by the Arab nations, UN,western nations and other global institutions has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there cannot be one shred of reliance on any outside effort to further the interest or mitigate the injustice perpetrated on the Jews. I add that these lies,libels, double standards, financial support,injustices continue at this very moment perpetrated by the europeans and their arab allies. Outrage and anger is the only reasonable first response to what has been done,: and continues to be done, and rationalized by sympathizers to the crimes. The second reasonable response is to reverse the damages and restore justice without wearing the blinders of double standards. There can be no rational condemnation of any action which has been perpetrated on the Jews, accepted by the world and maintained without redress or remorse (especially those actions perpetrated during the oft touted Genva Conventions reign). Included within, but not limited to, these actions are: the creations and maintenance of the JEW FREE state of JOrdan, the maintenance of JEW FREE areas in the muslim controlled areas of the former palestine mandate territory, The direct murder and accessory to murder of the UK govt on fleeing holocaust Jews, the expelling of Jews from arab lands, the restrictions of jews worship in muslim lands,the continued finance, aiding and abetting of muslim terror organizations against Jews by the EU. I refer you to Yamit’s post.
@ CuriousAmerican: Historically all very similar to the tragic story of the Turkish and Muslim reaction to the Greek Revolution of 1821, which ignited a bitter Greco-Turkish hatred that endured into the 20th century and still survives today in Cyprus. By way of response (retaliation) to the rebirth of modern Greece, the Ottomans initiated systematic attacks against the Greek communities of the Middle East. Like the Greeks and Armenians, the Jews are one of the aboriginal Peoples of the Middle East. By contrast, the Turks are certainly not aboriginal to Anatolia which they conquered, starting in the 11th century CE. In the same way, the Arab People is not aboriginal to the Holy Land which is identical to the Jewish concept of “Eretz Israel.” Whether Greek, Armenian or Jewish, the ancient aboriginal Peoples have always had lots of suffering from Turkish and Arab invaders. The 850,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim countries ought to remind us that the Jewish People really is indigenous to the Middle East. Moreover, there have literally always been some Jews living in “Eretz Israel” every single day since the ethnogenesis of the Jewish People there, probably some time around the 6th century BCE. Though my own grandfather was a Jew from Romania, that does not mean that the Jewish People is not indigenous to the Middle East. Nor does my Romanian connection detract from the history of those Jews who always lived in the Middle East, including in “Eretz Israel.”
CuriousAmerican Said:
Thanks for the encouragement, that is exactly my agenda. Lets see a little outrage from you for the jewish refugees. I always notice your outrage on behalf of those engaged in trying to eradicate the jews from their homeland.
From Elder of Ziyon:
It isn’t that the issue of Jewish refugees has never been mentioned at the UN before. The issue is that for 65 years, the issue of Jewish refugees was deliberately ignored by the UN.
here is a brief survey of times that Israel or Jews brought the topic up to the attention of the UN:
1951:
The plight of the Arab refugees was the direct result of the hostilities launched by the Arab themselves against Israel to crush her out of existence at birth. The real claim of the refugees lay against the Arab Governments which had sent their armies to invade Israel, in cynical violation of their international obligations. For its part, the Israel Government was willing to make a contribution to the resettlement of the refugees, provided that such an arrangement be mutual. Israel had taken in some 200,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab Governments concerned. His delegation was willing to embark upon a discussion of the question with the Arab States, with a view to finding a constructive overall solution.
Israel was also willing to take up the question of blocked accounts, subject likewise to the understanding that any discussion would include the blocked accounts in Iraq and Jews who had left that country and been admitted to Israel.
1987:
Mr. RAMIN (Israel), speaking in exercise of the right of reply, said that the representatives of the Sudan and the United Arab Emirates had referred to only one side of the refugee problem. A study published by the United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, entitled Trends and Characteristics of International Migration since 1950, dealt with the Palestine refugees as part of the broader phenomenon of international migration. According to that study, as a result of the partition of Palestine, about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had left the territory that now constituted the State of Israel, while a large proportion of the Jewish population of the Arab States of Asia and North Africa had moved to Israel, the latter migration extending well into the 1960s. The study indicated that 578,000 Jewish immigrants from Arab-speaking nations had been received by Israel. Both the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were dealt with in the study under the same heading.
In an article published in May 1975 in the Lebanese daily paper Al-Nahar, a well-known Palestinian Arab scholar had stated that the Jewish refugees from the Arab States had been displaced in the most brutal manner after their property had been confiscated, and that their migration to Israel had had a very direct impact on the Palestinian problem. Lastly, in his memoirs published in Beirut in 1973, a former Prime Minister of the Syrian Arab Republic had admitted that the Arab leaders themselves had encouraged the Palestinians to leave their homes and lands, something which had had disastrous results for 1 million Palestinian Arab refugees.
Also 1987:
That war had caused a large-scale movement of Arabs out of Israeli territory and an increased exodus of Jews from the Arab States where their families had lived for centuries. At that time, there had been about 1 million Jews in the Arab countries, the majority of whom had since found refuge in the Jewish State and within a relatively short time had become self-supporting citizens. With the acquiescence of the Arab Governments, there had been a virtual exchange of population between Israel and the Arab countries, somewhat similar to that between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s and between India and Pakistan in the late 1940s. The search for a possible settlement could not be based on reversing those two parallel movements of large masses of people but must be guided by the successful integration of refugees in other parts of the world.
There had been no discussions in the United Nations about the plight of the Jewish refugees and no relief agencies established to help in their rehabilitation. The Arabs who had left Israel had also found refuge among their own kin, the great majority merely moving from Jewish-controlled areas of Palestine to those under Arab control. Yet they had become wards of the United Nations, and UNRWA had been set up to assist in their rehabilitation. The most striking difference between the treatment of the two groups of refugees, however, had been the attitude of the Arab Governments towards their own brethren. Their misery was to be perpetuated and exploited in the campaign of unabated political and military hostility against Israel. Development plans to resettle them and provide work had been rejected by the Arab Governments, which had also barred emigration to receptive third countries. Attempts by refugees to become self-supporting within the host countries were discouraged. Those facts had been recognized in the January-March 1957 bulletin of the Research Group for European Migration problems, which had stated that the Arab Governments were seeking to prevent any sort of adoption and integration because the refugees were seen as a political means of pressure to obtain the greatest possible number of concessions. A former head of UNRWA in Jordan had said in 1958 that the Arab States wanted to keep the refugee problem as an affront to the United Nations and a weapon against Israel.
1991:
Significantly, the sponsors of this resolution have not suggested at any time that similar steps be taken regarding the confiscated Jewish property in Arab countries. As a result of the 1948 War, approximately 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries were resettled in Israel. The property left behind by these Jewish refugees (estimated to be worth billions of dollars) was expropriated by the governments of the Arab countries in which they lived. There can be no difference in law, justice or equity between the claims of Arab and Jewish property owners. By doing so, the sponsors of resolution 45/73 H are suggesting that Israel’s sovereignty is limited or restricted by some provision that does not apply to other Member States of the United Nations.
2001:
DAVID LITTMAN, of the World Union For Progressive Judaism, addressed the question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries in 1947. After the proclamation of independence of the State of Israel, the armies of five Arab countries, with the support of the Arabs of Palestine under British mandate, had invaded the new State. This war was a pretext for the intensification and legitimization of a settling of accounts in Arab countries. The leaders of these countries had forced Jews to abandon their homes and property and take the path to exile. The State of Israel constituted a natural refuge for the great majority of these refugees from the Arab world. These Jewish refugees had been the victims of waves of pogroms and humiliation. These refugees, unlike the Arab refugees of Palestine, did not receive any compensation from the international community, and had not even requested any compensation.
2003, written statement submitted by World Union for Progressive Judaism to the UN:
During the first half of the 20th century thousands of Jewish men, women, and children, the young and the old, were brutally massacred in Arab countries in North Africa, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Aden — even under French and British colonial rule — and also in Palestine by lawless gangs soon after the British conquest in 1918, and throughout the Mandate period.
Already in Iraq (1936, and especially the Baghdad farhud of 1941), Syria (1944, 1945), Egypt and Libya (1945), and Aden (1947), murderous attacks had killed and wounded thousands. All these events occurred before Israel’s independence. Here is a description from the official first-hand report in 1945 by Tripoli’s Jewish community president Zachino Habib on what happened to Libyan Jews in Tripoli, Zanzur, Zawiya, Casabat, Zitlin on 4-5 Nov. 1945: “The Arabs attacked Jews in obedience to mysterious orders. Their outburst of bestial violence had 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.” (6)
A recent example of such terrorist acts was perpetrated on 11 April 2002 when the jihadist bombing of the ancient al-Ghariba synagogue of Djerba in Tunisia killed 17 and badly wounded many others, most of them elderly German tourists. A spokesman for Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing. Tunisia’s remaining Jewish community of about 1,000 — a remnant of an indigenous community with roots in the country’s Phoenician past — will probably soon seek security in Israel and elsewhere, as have 99 percent of their co-religionists since the late 1940s.
In 1945 about 140,000 Jews lived in Iraq; 60,000 in Yemen and Aden; 35,000 in Syria; 5,000 in Lebanon; 90,000 in Egypt; 40,000 in Libya; 150,000 in Algeria; 120,000 in Tunisia; 300,000 in Morocco, including Tangiers – a total of roughly 940,000 (and approximately 200,000 more in Iran and Turkey). Of these indigenous communities, less than 50,000 Jews remain today – and in the Arab world their number is barely 5,000, one-half of one percent of the overall total at the end of the Second World War.
Pogroms and persecutions — and grave fears for their future — regularly preceded the mass expulsions and exoduses of these indigenous Jews, whose ancestors had inhabited these regions from time immemorial, over a millenium before the successive jihad waves of Arab invaders from the seventh century. Beginning in 1948-49, more than 650,000 of these Oriental Jewish refugees, stripped of everything, were integrated into Israel’s sparse area of 20,000 km2 – even as the new State was being threatened with extinction by neighbouring Arab States. A further 300,000 or so Jewish refugees found asylum elsewhere, in Europe and the Americas.
About half of Israel’s 5.2 million Jews — from a population of about 6.5 million, of whom roughly 20% are Arab, Druze, and Bedouin Israelis — is composed of these forgotten refugees and their descendants, who received no humanitarian aid from the United Nations and did not ask for it. It was Israel alone, with the help of Jewish communities just emerging from the Shoah, which achieved their humanitarian survival and integration into a nascent society.
Similar statement from WUPJ to the UN, 2010:
The transfer of populations on a large scale has been a characteristic of human history, particularly in the Orient – deportations, expropriations and expulsion of dhimmis (Jews, Christians and other indigenous peoples) was a constant factor over a long history of dhimmitude – after the Arab jihad-wars of conquest, expropriation and occupation. This policy continues, while a historically-flawed memory systematically spotlights only Arab refugees from a part of Mandatory Palestine as a result of war while forgetting others – particularly dhimmi Jews in their ancestral homeland, expropriated and expelled over the centuries, and their numerous brethren in the Arab-Muslim dar al-Islam. Jews were forbidden to reside in Arabia since the advent of Islam (except for Yemen and a part of the Gulf region), and in the eastern part of Palestine since 1922, when it became the Hashemite Emirate.
The hardship endured by the great majority of these indigenous Jewish refugees from Arab countries has never been examined by UN bodies, nor the loss of their inestimable heritage dating back two and three millennium – nor their vast personal and property rights. This great injustice should be addressed at the United Nations and elsewhere, all within the context of an equitable global solution for a peaceful, international recognition of a two-State solution. A noteworthy document – with references to specific references to Jewish refugees by both President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton was adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives as Resolution 185 on 1 April 2008.
…It should also be allowed under international law for Jews to live in the whole League of Nations area of Palestine (within both the Arab Kingdom of Jordan and the future Arab State of Palestine), just like Arabs, Druze and other non-Jews do in Israel, either as Israeli citizens or foreign residents.
Turn about is fair play; but unless you mention the Farhud of 1941 in Baghdad, the Arabs will deny that the Jewish exodus was a response to the earlier Nakba.
Actually, a good portion of the Jewish Exodus occurred after 1949, and was not immediately directly related to the war of Independence. The Palesatinians were smart enough to oppose the Jewish expulsions which would land the Jews in Israel. They did not seek expulsions. That was a generic Arab response.
The Arabs will deny any relation to the Jewish exodus and claim it was voluntary.
But you need to mention the Farhud of 1941 in Baghdad to make the point that the expulsions were a generic Arab response which justified Israel.
The Farhud of 1941 in Baghdad nails down that no Jews was safe even before Israel.
The best defense is offense. Good to see Israel going on the front foot.
Don’t hold back, Ross. Tell us what you think!
This should be an ongoing strategy to showcase the ethnic cleanising, showcase the double standarrd of not applying the Geneva Conventions, showcase that a precedent has been set by allowing the action without addressing it in the UN, that unless the UN wishes to encourage a quid pro qo regardidng arab refugees it needs to first restore justice to the jewish refugees,first come, first serve; showcase that right now a mockery has been made of the geneva conventions and all international law. From this it must proceed to the right of the jewish people to be able to rely on the treaties “encouraging the Jews to settle west of the jordan river” and the showcasing of the swindles of the jews made by the UK and continuing by the EU today.
Israel should deport this blood libeling dog after first jailing her. Israel should be the one place where such libels are rewarded mercilessly. It is an abuse to all the jewish refugees from those muslim cesspools that this nazi pig is allowed to be alive in Israel. She should be treated like Eichmann, she has the same goal. Perhaps we will get lucky and some Jew with guts will give her the rifle butt she deserves or run her down with a bulldozer. Enough is enough!
Pot, meet kettle.