The vanishing Jews of the Arab world

SFGate ^ | 3-8-05 | Semha Alwaya

[SJackson]

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

[SJackson]

I have never agreed with the charge that somehow America was culpable in the holocaust becuase they did not bomb the railroad tracks in central and eastern Europe. Its a relatively new idea.

Probably because America isn't. It's a nonsensical arguement.

[SJackson]

Don't thank me, I have nothing to do with these things.

[chukcha]

I've read that Morocco & Jordan still have Jewish communities.

Morocco - yes, very small, Jordan - I doubt it. It is illegal for a Jew to own any property in Jordan.

[KC_Conspirator]

You can here the this idea discussed in academic circles now in these "holocaust studies" classes.

[chukcha]

Having the US back the formation of Isreal when the "international community" was against it ...

Please, don't invent history. Even Soviet Union voted for the creation of Israel.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 11/29/1947. It called for the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

In favour: 33

Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian S.S.R., Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukrainian S.S.R., Union of South Africa, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Uruguay, Venezuela.

Against: 13

Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

Abstained: 10

Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

[sheik yerbouty]

Are you lost again?

[KC_Conspirator]

I am not inventing history. In fact, your layout shows that I am right. It took alot of arm twisting to get to 33 countries by 1947. Don't you think that after the holocaust and the Nuremburg trials that this should have been pretty damn close to a unaminous vote? But 23 countries, including Great Britain (authors of the Balfour Declaration) did not vote for it?

[chukcha]

In fact, your layout shows that I am right.

whatever...

[free_european]

The Soviets were in favour chiefly as they imagined Israel would be a client state, later events disabused them of that.

[underlying]

From the article:
In 1941 ... In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

[underlying]

From the article:
In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property.
In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property.

[underlying]

muslims and nonmuslims