Deputy foreign minister says matter of Jewish refugees who fled Arab states after 1948 is a “core issue” in talks with Palestinians.
The Foreign Ministry – along with the World Jewish Congress and the Pensioners Affairs Ministry – is ramping up its campaign to bring the issue of Jewish refugee rights to public and diplomatic attention.
According to the Foreign Ministry more than 850,000 Jews from Arab states fled their countries of birth following persecution that ensued after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Many also had their property confiscated.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post on Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Deputy Pensioners Affairs Minister Lea Nass said the government was currently finalizing plans to institute a national day of recognition for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It is also planning to build a museum to document the historical events of these communities, as well as their cultural heritage; collate testimony from thousands of refugees; and bring the issue front and center on the diplomatic stage.
Ayalon also pointed to legislation passed in the Knesset in 2010 obliging any government conducting peace negotiations with the Palestinians to include the issue of compensation for Jewish refugees as part of any final status talks.
“This is one of the core issues,” the deputy minister said. “It is not separate and certainly, when it comes to negotiations, it will be part and parcel of the refugee issue as a whole.”
Ayalon denied that the campaign was designed to hinder the peace process, adding that even if that were the case Israel was already being accused of obstructionism.
“They say we’re not ready for peace anyway, but this is not a reason not to do what is just and right for hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.
“This is not a reason not to show a mirror in front of the entire world, in particular the Arab countries.”
Ayalon also insisted that Israel-Palestinian negotiations were the correct forum for advancing the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, saying the linkage stemmed from historical precedents following wars on the Indian subcontinent and Europe.
He added that part of the proposals made in the Arab Peace Initiative suggesting that an Israeli settlement with the Palestinians should bring peace and normalization with the entire Arab world, meant that the Jewish refugee issue should be dealt with in this comprehensive manner.
The Pensioners Affairs Ministry, which was given responsibility for the issue in 2009, has taken the lead on the documentation of testimony from refugees and their descendants. Nass explained that it was critical to record the stories of the refugees, who, she said, had largely been forgotten.
“The Jewish people left behind their property, their stories and their history,” said Nass. “It’s important in our religion to first of all tell the story. The story has disappeared, and when we meet these people they express great pain that it has not been told.”
The ministry has digitized 20,000 documents pertaining to the Jewish refugees and will next week actively begin to collect further such documents and testimony, in coordination with various interest groups representing Jews from Arab countries.
The project, named “I am a refugee” and having an initial budget of NIS 2 million, calls on refugees and their descendants to come forward and present their stories, documents, pictures and other records to create an archive similar to that in Yad Vashem for victims of the Holocaust.
World Jewish Congress (WJC) secretary-general Dan Diker praised the cooperation of the Foreign Ministry and the Pensioners Affairs Ministry, saying progress being made on the issue would not have been possible without them.
Diker also focused on the need to advance legislation in governments around the world, as well as at the UN, to ensure that the issue was given sufficient attention and weight.
“This government, along with the WJC, is advancing this issue as a global Jewish project of highest urgency,” he said. “We are taking a position, we’re insisting on rights based diplomacy and we’re saying enough is enough.”
The Foreign Ministry and the WJC will be staging a media event at the United Nations headquarters in New York in September to gain media and diplomatic attention. It will coincide with the beginning of the UN General Assembly session. Along with the Pensioners Affairs Ministry, it will also hold an international conference in September called “Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.”
@ Bernard Ross:
You are wrong about that, but otherwise I agree with much of what you say. But still, to make an international agreement about restitution would be silly, just because such an agreement would give the Arabs a degree of power which they otherwise don’t have. International agreements are about mutual and reciprocal rights which the Israelis should not give the Arabs. That is my point.
“According to the Foreign Ministry more than 850,000 Jews from Arab states fled their countries of birth following persecution that ensued after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Many also had their property confiscated.”
In fact, the persecution of Jews in Arab countries started long before the RE-establishment of Israel. Persecution reached new heights during WW2 (1939-1945) when the Arabs who, on the whole were anti-British and pro-Nazi, preferred to collaborate with the latter against the former. While Sheikh Haj Amin al-Hussein, the Egyptian Mufti of Jerusalem, fled to Germany to collaborate directly in the genocide of Europe’s Jews, the Arabs of the region intensified the HRs abuses against their Jewish citizens to such an extent that not only did they steal the properties and every source of wealth from the Jews, Jewish men were increasingly beaten up or killed in the streets, their businesses, homes and concentration-type
camps, or hanged en masse before howling mobs while more and more Jewish women were raped and/or abducted.
The only difference between Nazi persecution of European Jewry and that of the Arabs is that the Nazis murderd 6 million of their Jews, while the Arabs expelled 850,000 of theirs, leaving only a few thousand in Egypt, Morocco and Yemen.
Per Said:
When has this not been the case?
Per Said:
Again, when has this not been the case?
Per Said:
I am not sure of this statement as western nations have accepted the transfer of Jews even after the Hague and GC were instituted, so why not the arabs? Perhaps it is a matter of education and changing the narrative to the Jews perspective. If Israel had predicated its existence on western countries defending its policies not one jew would remain alive today. The western countries, and Japan, signed treaties and guaranteed that Jews must be encouraged to settle west of the Jordan river. Furthermore, the western countries apparently defended the British policy of creating a JEW FREE state from 77% of the former palestine mandate territories.
Per Said:
If what you say is true then it reinforces my reasoning that Israel must act unilaterally as a world that sees restitution to the jews as politically dangerous is a world to be feared but not respected. I notice that you take the terms of restitution and compensation to imply returning to homes from which jews were expelled. Can you actually imagine this ever being agreed to by Jews or it ever happening? However, after seeing the “disengagement” I can imagine the arabs can be transferred across the borders to the 3 currently hostile entities.
I note that all your posts put power into the arabs hands but this is not the case, if they had the power they would kill every jew in israel. The only power they have is to pressure the US and EU to pressure Israel: this is a good show but where has it got them? When the Jews wake up to the legal and moral correctness of their rights and justice things will change. The arabs will continue to seek to kill jews and no peace, as is being demonstrated, will change that fact. Therefore, it is better to accept it and vanquish the enemy. Remember, in 1967 the first day of peace for Israel was the first day of the war against the arabs.
@ Bernard Ross:
That would make a wonderful political demonstration, fit for Hollywood, but it would not solve any problem for Israel and the Jews. The Arabs would be greatly delighted if Israel becomes that foolish, and it would give them whatever political ammunition they need for defining Israel as the conflict’s culprit. No Western country, including the USA, would dear to defend that policy, which Arab propaganda could easily define as an Israeli extermination campaign against the “Palestinians.” The whole idea of Arab restitution for the Jewish refugees is a politically dangerous non starter which only the Arabs would welcome.
@ Per:it doesnt matter because israel can implement transfer without an agreement based on the precedent set in the expelling of Jews. No one would expect that justice for the jews is for them to return to muslim hatred 50 years later. The arabs hold no cards they cannot act unilaterally to enforce their will where as Israel can if it has the guts, and with legal precedent and a basis in quid pro quo: what was done to the Jews is ok also for the arabs. the fact that no action was taken over the expelling of the jews is a set precedent. If there is no agreement Israel can bus them to buffer zones across the borders and then leave them there. Israel should demand compensation to the jews, compensation to israel for absorbing the jewish refugees and arab financing for relocation grants to arab refugees. It is time to stop focussing on the arabs and focus on the jews. Israel should state that without a reasonable solution tto the jewish refugee questioon there will be unilateral transfer. Going back 59 years and leaving the arabs in place cant work for either side. Egypt is again flexing its muscle and soon there will be war, egypt has SAMs on israels borders with tanks. Next time Israel wins a war it must decimate the enemy and seize its assets permanently. Israel has been across the suez and close to cairo. The MB is flush with US supplied arms and they want a war as demagogues always do, to get rid of opposition.
@ Bernard Ross:
But you seem to miss the mark entirely. If Israel and/or the Jews raise a legal claim against the Arab states, it is my guess that the Arabs will welcome it, claiming mutual rights (of return) for the “Palestinians.” The idea of Jews claiming restitution from the Arabs will in all probability turn out to be a bullet in their own leg.
Here are the links for my previous post about the need to expose the Israeli government silence regarding the Nazi origins of the PLO.
“Hitler’s Long Shadow Over Israel”
“Nazi-Arab collaboration was crucial to the Final Solution. The Third Reich financed and trained the Muslim Brothers of Palestine and Egypt in terrorism and focused their anti-modernity rage on Jews.
“One of the first people Hitler told about his plans to kill Europe’s Jews was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat’s cousin.
“Hitler and the mufti shook hands on a plan to exterminate all the Jews of the Middle East. The Reich preserved the memo, the minutes, and a photo of their famous handshake.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/hitlers_long_shadow_over_israel.html
~~~~~~~
How the Palestinian Movement Emerge? The British sponsored, then the Nazis, then the US
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was trained by the Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al Husseini, creator of PLO/Fatah, to continue killing Jews. Al Husseini and Hitler worked closely in the creation and implementation of the Final Solution.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
What’s still not talked about.
It took all these years to highlight the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
How much longer will it take to expose the direct connection between the Holocaust, Hitler and the Nazi Arabs? Pardon, I meant Israel’s partners for peace. I meant the same ones the government continues to entice to take Jewish land for a Nazi state of their own.
I submitted a comment about this issue earlier today but it’s being held for moderation. It’s past bedtime in Israel now, so I hope I can get at least this brief comment posted today.
my earlier post is still in moderation
@ Per:this is not contemplated in israels wildest imagination, so it is not worth considering. It does not matter what the arabs want, this is why they still have no agreement. Who would contemplate that decades later jews would return to arab countries? Many have come to Israel and the costs of their absorption have already been ongoing for decades. Why would anyone think to uproot them again? Its the arab turn to be uprooted.
@ yamit82:
So it is. But for the Arabs, this is an irrelevant side of the issue. Their only objective is to take any opportunity to undermine Israeli society and the Jews. An agreement on “mutual right of return,” might, in their view, give them a possibility to achieve that, and almost for free. If the Jewish refugees and their decendants were given back confiscated property and land amounting to an area larger than Israel, very few of them would return, and market value would be close to zero. If “Palestinians” were to reoccupy their former villages in Israel, whether owned or leased, the country would be flooded by millions of URWA-Arabs. And you can imagine the result.
Per Said:
This is obviously a non starter and too late in the day. What the UN needs to sponsor is warcrimes trials for all the involved ethnic cleansing personalities and explain why it has not applied the Geneva Conventions in this case.
Per Said:
Who negotiated for the Pakistanis and indians who were forced to leave? PA is a participant as representative of the “Palestinians”. The arabs could offer them money to relocate or Israel could just transfer them over 3 adjacent borders of the entities who are still at war with Israel(lebanon, Syria, Gaza). Egypt and JOrdan may want to participate if the UN and Arabs give them money.
Per Said:
Actually trasfer of the arabs over the 3 hostile borders would be the quickest and cheapest way and Israel has already practiced this sort of transfer. This would also be the fairest way as it would complete a population exchange already completed by the Jews. Like the INdians and pakistanis, they cannot live together in peace. Precedence has already been set by prior transfers in like circumstances and by the expelling of the Jews. This would be the most sensible approach that can actually work when factoring in all the costs of maintaining the pals as refugees. Arabs remaining on the west bank will not work.
@ Per:
Most of restitutional value is in property and commercial financial losses. I have seen estimates of Jewish losses in the tens of billions of dollars adjusted to current dollar values.
Most of the Arab displaced from Palestine in 48 and 67 were not the owners of their property and homesteads. They held leases in some cases from Jewish landlords but it was not theirs. When it came to property rights the Ottomans, Jordanians and British kept precise accurate records.
This is a matter which the Israeli Government would have to negotiate with the Arab League or the OIC, rather than with the “Palestinians” who have no say in Arab countries. No one should be surprised if this proposal would be embraced by the Arabs, who most likely would welcome the Jews and all their decendants to return to their old Arab dwellings and have all their property and values returned to them. A UN-sponsored International Agreement on Mutual Right of Return and Restitution is perhaps the quickest and cheapest way for the Arabs to get rid of Israel and the Jews. They would love to sign such an agreement, not having to bother about expensive nuclear bombs.
EXPOSE THE MUSLIM-NAZI LINK AS WELL
Stop the silence.
(Part One)
Like the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the Muslim-Nazi close complicity in the Holocaust needs to be brought to the forefront. There is so much documentation and evidence in this regard that the decades-long official silence cannot be seen as anything but a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT AT A COVERUP.
– The Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler got together to create the FINAL SOLUTION for the destruction of the Jews. The PLO is the direct descendant of Arab Nazis responsible for the Holocaust.
– There is a continuum between the Final Solution and the current terror and propaganda war against the Jews by Arab terrorists and their Western allies. The Holocaust idea ia alive and well and being nourished in Muslim and Western centers of power.
– Hitler is revered in the PA, Gaza, and in Muslim countries. “Palestinian” terrorists and militias have even adopted the Heil Hitler salute. But the Israeli government deems the PA worthy of a state on Jewish land.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Your evidence and sources?
EXPOSE THE MUSLIM-NAZI LINK AS WELL.
Stop the silence!
Like the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the Nazi-Muslim close complicity in the Holocaust needs to be brought to the forefront. There is so much documentation and evidence in this regard that this decades-long official silence cannot be seen as anything but a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT AT A COVERUP.
– The Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler got together to create the FINAL SOLUTION for the destruction of the Jews. The PLO is the direct descendant of Arab Nazis responsible for the Holocaust.
– There is a continuum between the Final Solution and the current terror and propaganda war against the Jews by Arab terrorists and their Western allies. The Holocaust idea ia alive and well and being nourished in Muslim and Western centers of power.
– Hitler is revered in the PA, Gaza, and in Muslim countries. “Palestinian” terrorists and militias have even adopted the Heil Hitler salute. But the Israeli government deems the PA worthy of a state on Jewish land.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hitler’s Long Shadow
Nazi-Arab collaboration was crucial to the Final Solution. The Third Reich financed and trained the Muslim Brothers of Palestine and Egypt in terrorism and focused their anti-modernity rage on Jews. One of the first people Hitler told about his plans to kill Europe’s Jews was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat’s cousin. Hitler and the mufti shook hands on a plan to exterminate all the Jews of the Middle East. The Reich preserved the memo, the minutes, and a photo of their famous handshake
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/hitlers_long_shadow_over_israel.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How did the ‘Palestinian movement’emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.
The current leader of PLO/Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, was trained by the Mufti of Jerusalem — Hajj Amin al Husseini, creator of PLO/Fatah — to continue the German Nazi Final Solution. Hajj Amin al Husseini was, with Adolf Eichmann, the top leader of the German Nazi Final Solution.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm
It is not only about compensation it is also about the ethnic cleansing of Jews under the auspices of the Geneva Convention nations. Justice can only be restored on the ethnic cleansing issue by considering the cleansing to be a population exchange(as per india/pakistan, etc)with the arabs to complete their obligation to move. If this is not done then a precedent has been set which has waived the Geneva Conventions as it has been ignored and unenforced by its guarantors. This precedent begs for the forced tranfer if justice is not forthcoming. Regarding any expenses or compensation to refugees of both sides: the arabs initiated the war, instigated the “pals” to leave (with the reward of returning to the future dead jews homes)and exxpelled the Jews. As the direct cause they are also the only party liable to damages.
Note how just claims by Jews are treated as trivial and unimportant by others. Instead of being apologetic he should be angry and insulting to those who minimize damage to the Jews.
Hopefully this should mean that the minimum negotiating position should require the transfer of the arabs from the west bank and the compensation of the expelled Jews from arab countries. I Is it only Jews that may be transferred? If not then Israel has the right on its own to force the completion of the population exchange. Furthermore, Israel should demand that all the participant govts and the individuals involved in this crime against humanity and war crime be brought befor the Hague. If this is not done then the Geneva Conventions are a laughing stock to be ignored, the same for “international law”. If lthe law is not administered equally and fairly it cannot be given credence.
I truly hope that this issue becomes the central issue of focus for Jews as it cannot be left unaddressed as the jew swindlers desire. Legal precedence will be set if this issue is pursued. “we’re insisting on rights based diplomacy ” they should also insist on the Geneva Conventions crime based diplomacy
CuriousAmerican Said:
Rubbish as usual. It is a war between the arabs and the Jews which began before 1948. One half of a population exchange between the warring parties(arabs and jews) has already taken place with the expelling of the Jews from arab nations and from any area of the former palestine mandate territory under arab control. It now remains for this unfinished exchange to be completed by the transfer of the arabs from all areas west of the Jordan river. 77% of the designated jewish homeland was illegally excluded from jewish settlement through British swindles. Therefore this JEW FREE area is the area set aside for non jews from the palestine mandate territory. The jews continued to be expelled from arab nations after the advent of the Geneva cnventions. If the population exchange is not completed then the expelling of Jews is an ethnic cleansing under the auspices of the Geneva Conventions. As usual your posts tend towards giving jews the short end of the stick. Odd how so many facts of history are conveniently forgotten.
CuriousAmerican Said:
you are a legend in your own mind
It is a good point.
And the Arab states should deal with it.
But the Palestinians themselves had nothing to do with it. In fact, as I understand it, they opposed the explusions of Jews in 1948 from Araby, as it would hurt their own cause, which it has.
But since I try to be fair … here is the best Jewish site which deals with it from the Jewish side.
http://www.justiceforjews.com/legal.html