Jews displaced from Arab lands finally recognized

[IndianaGreen]

Back in 2000, President Clinton mooted the idea of establishing an international fund to compensate both Palestinian and Jewish refugees. Devash wants to see such a fund established, and wants Israel, Arab countries and international donors such as the United States to contribute to it.

Last update - 16:16 11/03/2010

Jews displaced from Arab lands finally recognized

By Nathan Jeffay, The Forward

For the first time since they came to Israel, all 10 Jewish communities displaced from Arab countries have agreed on a course of action to address their grievances - and triumphed in the political arena.

The plight of the estimated 856,000 Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries after the establishment of the State of Israel has played a minimal role so far in negotiations for Middle East peace. But on February 22, the Knesset adopted a law under which any Israeli government entering into peace talks must use those talks to advance a compensation claim for those who became Israeli citizens.

The impact on the Middle East peace process is unclear. But according to the law's supporters, its implications for Jews from Arab countries is substantial. "This is a historic decision that will make peace in the Middle East about justice for everyone," said Isaac Devash, the lobbyist who brought the various communities together around the legislative proposal and then took it to the Knesset. Devash, a Tel Aviv businessman and child of Libyan Jews, is a volunteer with the New York-based group Justice for Jews From Arab Countries.

Supporters of the new law say that its passage also shows that Israel today is more accepting of Sephardic discourse than it has been in the past. It illustrates "that we suffered as well as the Jews from Europe, and this is important," Nachum Gilboa, a leader of the representative council for Libyan Jewry, told the Forward.

The United Nations estimates that, upon the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, 726,000 Palestinians became refugees. JJAC estimates that at the same time, Arab states displaced 856,000 Jewish citizens, in many cases seizing their personal and communal assets. Around two-thirds settled in Israel, and the rest went elsewhere, mostly to France, the United States and Canada. There is no agreed-upon estimate of the assets these Jews lost, though Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA and Treasury Department official, used data on Palestinian losses to extrapolate some $6 billion in lost Jewish assets.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155803.html

[proteus_lives]

1. About time.

[mwrguy]

2. Two wrongs

do not make a right.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. Hitching a ride on the magic carpet

Hitching a ride on the magic carpet

By Yehouda Shenhav

link:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329736

Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms

An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets.

The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.

snip: The organization's claims infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not refugees. came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations."

Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."

In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."

The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign. She reported that members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so offended that they threatened to boycott organization meetings should the topic of "Sephardi Jews as refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration precisely predicted the failure of the current organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries to inspire enthusiasm for its efforts. "

snip: "Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition.

In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.

The history of the "Mizrahi aliyah" (immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis).

The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation. "

link to full article:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329736

[aquart]

4. Displacing Jews and sending them to Jewish communities

Is not equal to displacing Arabs and sending them to Arab communities. Because Jews LIKE being with Jews and Arabs hate being with Arabs?

Or because the Jews were already hated in the lands they'd lived in....how long? And now the Arabs get to know how that feels?

People were displaced to make the Aswan Dam...pretty much any dam...but they didn't make it their identity like the "Palestinians" did. People have had to leave homelands and emigrate for all kinds of reasons and only Semites make a fuss about it. Well, the Jews were forced out and the Arabs moved in and then the Arabs were forced out and the Jews moved in.

And I'm supposed to assign a moral superiority to the Arabs because they were last out?

[FarrenH]

5. I think the Haaretz article is saying its a lot more complex than that

and that the reconstruction of history employed is facile and deceptive. Your response appears to be to ignore key statements backing that up and going right back to the facile reading of history, which is quite funny.

In case you missed it, the claim is made (and can be historically verified and is borne out by the statements of some actual Shepardic Jews) that most if not all Palestinian refugees or their families were forced out by violent conflict, while a substantial numbers of Shepardic Jews came by choice, rather than them all being forced out of Arab countries - thus muddying the claim of equivalence.