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The creation of Israel is only 50% due to European Jewish Zionism. The other 50% is the ingathering of Jews from Arab nations/territories. 800,000 Jews were driven out of Arab controlled places where they had lived for centuries. Now the Arabs have Jew free nations so actually they should thank Israel. The Israel of today is 43% composed of the 800,000 Jews (and their offspring) who were expelled from Arab nations post 1948
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July 2001
To The Editor THE MAGAZINE
The Jerusalem Post.
_________________________
Dear Editor,
That is why we have not heard about the fact that, though the Christians
(mainly non-Arab) constituted l3% of the population of the Middle East
during World War I, today, with natural increase, they account for only 2%.
Most of these non-Arab Christians, e.g. Egyptian Copts, Assyrians of Iraq,
etc. have either suffered forced Islamisation or have left their native
Middle East, where their history dates back long before the rise of Islam.
Those that remain are still victimized. Even most of the Christian world,
including the Vatican, is silent.
As for the Jews, what is today the Arab world constituted its most ancient
Diaspora with a rich history rooted in the region for over a thousand years
before the Islamic conquest. We have witnessed the dissolution of virtually
this whole Diaspora with the majority of these Jews opting for Israel.
Today, they and their progeny make up 43% of the Jewish State's population
(not including Jews from Iran). Some came out of love of Zion, as did a
minority of us from the West.
The majority (800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab nations)
was forced out, not by an edict as in Spain, but because it
became impossible to continue to live there:
Pogroms swept the area with the exit of the colonial regimes which, whatever
their sins, largely nullified the racist dhimmi legislation Islam imposes on
Jews and Christians alike. In Baghdad on Shavuoth, l941, the Farhud broke
out, 175 Jews were killed, a thousand injured, Jewish property looted and
900 Jewish houses destroyed. And again in l945 and 1948. The scourge of loot
and murder struck the Jews of Libya in 1945 and 1948; Aden in 1947; Aleppo
in l945 (including the looting of the Great Synagogue), again in l947 and
1948 and Damascus, Syria in 1938, 1945 and 1949. Moslem riots hit Egypt in
l945 and 1948 and where, in l947, racist legislation deprived the majority
of Jews of their places of work. In North Africa too, particularly in the
l950's.
No Arab country was innocent of abuses. Yet the media was not
greatly moved. Not a single Moslem Arab or breast-beating human rights
activist expressed sorrow at Moslem injustice to Christians or Jews.
You have performed a public service by printing an article about the
deplorable Moslem slave trade in Sudan. It is also a source of pride that
the leader of the humanitarian movement to abolish it, Charles Jacobs, is a
Jew (The Jewish abolitionist by Robby Berman, July 6). The silence of
organizations such as the UN and Amnesty International only confirms our
opinion of them as biased and unbalanced in their views and actions. Mr.
Jacobs makes an important statement when he says that "People are also
silent because they are terrified of being labeled anti-Arab or
anti-Muslim".
Yours sincerely, Malka Hillel Shulewitz,
Editor THE FORGOTTEN MILLIONS
The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands.
The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands
Edited by Malka Hillel Shulewitz
London: Cassell, 1999. 238 pp. $75
Middle East Quarterly
September 1999As the Palestinians gear up to press their case for reparations and other benefits from Israel, it is fitting that the "forgotten" story of the Jewish refugees from the Arab lands also be brought to public attention. The editor counts their number and that of their progeny today at about two million; she argues that the "world in general and the Arabs in particular owe them a debt," for having left their homes without violence, having endured a very difficult time initially in Israel, integrating into life there, and then becoming productive citizens. The volume contains some first-class talent, mostly Israel academics, and they cover many aspects of the topic. Bat Ye'or provides a useful summary of her important theories about "dhimmitude," the state of mind of being a second-class citizen in the Islamic order: "The world of the dhimmi is one of silence," she writes, in just a few words summing up why the plight of the Jewish refugees is so vastly less known than that of their Palestinian counterparts. Reprising an analysis first made in this journal, Ya'akov Meron reviews the gratuitously cruel policies of the Arab states as they expelled their Jewish populations fifty years ago. Chapters by Yehuda Dominitz and Pnina Morag-Talmon usefully describe the absorption process within Israel. With luck, others will take heart from this study and speak up about the hundreds of thousands whose lives were disrupted not because of war but due to unregulated passions. Perhaps it might even lead a future Israel government to break with the tradition of ignoring the population exchange that took place a half century ago; and when opportuned about paying reparations and other benefits, will reply with a report along the lines of The Forgotten Millions. All material on this site ©1980-2001 Daniel Pipes.
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http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/06/13/Books/Books.8121.html MALKA SHULEWITZ'S book is also a collection of essays by noted academics and professionals, but its purview is narrower, highlighting the forced exodus of about 800,000 Jews from Arab countries between 1940 and 1970. According to Shulewitz, this exodus - whose numbers exceeded the 580,000 Palestinian Arab refugees of 1947-49 - was largely overlooked for two reasons: The enormity of the Holocaust of European Jewry overshadowed the tragic departure of Jews from Arab lands. The second reason was that the State of Israel tried to absorb these Jews, while the Arab states worked hard not to absorb the Arabs from Palestine. While some of these Eastern Jews had been well-off, the majority, as historian Norman Stillman has already observed, were a persecuted minority in ghetto-like communities known as "mellah" or "harat al-Yahud." Shulewitz says most of the Jews did not leave on their own but were forced out as the Arab states carried out an ethnic cleansing of their Jews. Any discussions of possible compensation for the Palestinian Arabs - for their dislocation - must, she says, also include discussion of compensation for the even larger number of Jews who were dislocated, not by war, but by Arab political decision. These views are buttressed by a joint essay on population transfer by her and by Islamic history expert Professor Raphael Israeli as well as a particularly trenchant analysis by Islamic law specialist Professor Yaakov Meron entitled "The Expulsion of the Jews from the Arab Countries: The Palestinians' Attitude Towards It and Their Claims." Professor Meron cites documented threats by Arab diplomats and Arab politicians regarding the fate of the Jews in their countries, if the United Nations went ahead and offered the Jews even a small state in Palestine. "The United Nations... should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries," declared Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha on November 24, 1947. Meron, citing these remarks and others, shows conclusively that leaders of several Arab countries threatened and then carried out the forced exodus of Jews. The Forgotten Millions also includes an excellent overview of the status of minority groups by Dr. Mordechai Nisan as well as a penetrating study of the discrimination and persecution of Christians in Arab countries by Professor Walid Phares who notes that more than one million of Egypt's Copts have emigrated under economic and social pressures of the last century. This excellent collection of essays (including chapters by Bat Ye'or, Harold Troper, Avi Beker and Pnina Morag-Talmon) is supplemented by first-rate maps and numerical tables detailing the movements of Arab and Jewish refugees. One can only hope that Israeli negotiators will take the time to read it. The writer, a regular contributor, is a Jerusalem-based journalist and academic.
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