JEWS DISPLACED FROM ARAB COUNTRIES: A STORY OF COLLUSION (League of Arab States)

JEWS DISPLACED FROM ARAB COUNTRIES: A STORY OF COLLUSION (League of Arab States)

Note: All documents are referenced and all source material is readily available in the United Nations Archives
Chronology of Events and Evidence
For over 2,500 years, Jews resided in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region in substantial numbers – fully 1,000 years before the advent of Islam. During the twentieth century, the uprooting of up to one million Jews from their ancient Jewish communities in ten Arab countries did not occur by happenstance.
State-sanctioned repressive measures, coupled often with violence and repression, precipitated the Jewish refugee problem in the Middle East.

There is ample evidence that points to collusion, a shared pattern of conduct amongst a number of Arab regimes that appeared intended to coerce Jews to leave, or to use them as weapons in the Arab world’s struggle against the State of Israel. This is evidenced from:
(a) The drafting of a Law by the Political
Committee of the Arab League that recommended a coordinated strategy of repressive measures against Jews;
(b) strikingly similar legislation and discriminatory decrees, enacted by numerous Arab governments, that violated the fundamental rights and freedoms of Jews resident in Arab countries;
(c) statements made by delegates of Arab countries at the U.N. during the debate on the ‘Partition Resolution’, representing a pattern of ominous threats made against Jews in Arab countries; and (d) newspaper reports from that period.
This Chronology provides a small sample, and not an exhaustive survey, of such of events and evidence.
* * * * *
In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League (League of Arab States) drafted a law that was to govern the legal status of Jewish residents in all Arab League countries (See attached Exhibit E). Arab diplomats at the UN sought to attribute blame for any danger to Jews on the Arab “masses” – indeed, even
to the UN itself – while, in fact, the Arab League was colluding to encourage state sanctioned discrimination against Jews in all of its member states – at the time, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen.

This Draft Law of the Arab League provided that “…all Jews – with the exception of citizens of non-Arab countries – were to be considered members of the Jewish ‘minority state of Palestine,'; that their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to ‘Zionist ambitions in Palestine; Jews believed to
be active Zionists would be interned as political prisoners and their assets confiscated; only Jews who accept active service in Arab armies or place themselves at the disposal of these armies would be considered ‘Arabs.'” 1
From the sheer volume of subsequent state-sanctioned discriminatory measures, replicated in so many Arab countries and instituted in such a parallel fashion, one is drawn to the conclusion that such evidence suggests a common pattern of repressive measures, – indeed collusion – against Jews by Arab governments
(See attached “State Sanctioned Persecution of Jews in Egypt {Exhibit K} and Iraq {Exhibit L}).
1 Text of Law Drafted by Political Committee of Arab League (See attached Exhibit E)
The following official statements demonstrate a pattern of ominously similar threats made against Jews in Arab countries:
November 24, 1947
In a key address to the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on the morning of November 24, 1947, just five days before that body voted on the Partition plan for Palestine, Heykal Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, made the following statement:
“The United Nations … should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Muslim countries. … If the United Nations decided to partition Palestine they might be responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews.”2
November 24, 1947
In an afternoon session of the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on November 24, 1947, the Palestinian delegate to the UN, Jamal Husseini, representing the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine to the UN General Assembly, made the following threat:
“It should be remembered that there were as many Jews in the Arab world as there are in Palestine whose positions might become very precarious.”3
November 28, 1947
Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fadil Jamali, at the 126th Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly stated:
“Not only the uprising of the Arabs in Palestine is to be expected but the masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate.”4
January 19, 1948
A memorandum was submitted to the U.N. Economic and Social Council by the World Jewish Congress, warning ECOSOC that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.” The memorandum referred to the Text of Law Drafted by Political Committee of [the] Arab League (See attached Exhibit E) which was already adopted by Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and Iraq. This law recommended discriminatory treatment against Jewish residents in all Arab League countries. The Memorandum went on to report on recent incidents of violence and other anti-Jewish measures in a variety of Arab countries. Due to the “extreme urgency” of this matter, the WJC requested that this matter be placed on “the agenda of the forthcoming” meeting of the
U.N. Economic and Social Council.
2 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Record of the Thirteenth Meeting, Lake Success, N.Y., November 24, 1947 (A/AC.14/SR.30). This comment was made at 10:30 am.
3 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Record of the Thirty-First Meeting, Lake Success, N.Y., November 24, 2947 (A/AC.14/SR.31) This
comment was made at 2:30 pm.
4 U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Verbatim Record of the 126th Plenary Meeting, November 28, 1947, p. 1391.
February 16, 1948
A second Memorandum was submitted by the World Jewish Congress to the ECOSOC President, citing cases of serious violence, economic discrimination and “anti-Jewish excesses” that had occurred in Syria. Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Bahrain, urging the Council “to take up the situation of these Jewish populations as a matter of immediate international concern.”5
March 5, 1948
Item 37 on the agenda of the UN Economic and Social Council, supported by Document E/710
(See attached Exhibit J) was to deal with the “extreme and imminent danger” to Jews in Arab countries. The Council’s President, Dr. Charles H. Malik (Lebanon), utilized a procedural maneuver that resulted in the matter never being addressed.
March 11, 1948
When the Council was ready to resume its deliberations, Mr. Katz-Suchy (Poland) requested that the matter of Document E/710 (See attached Exhibit J: The World Jewish Congress Memorandum that alluded to “The extreme and imminent danger to Jews residing in the near and Middle East) be
reconsidered. He charged that “agreement had been reached among the five major Powers not to discuss document E/710″ and argued that “usual” Council procedure was not followed. Mr. Kaminsky (Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic) declared that “he could not condone a practice whereby items on the agenda were allowed to disappear from the agenda.” A resolution
recommending that this matter be discussed in full at the next Council meeting (July 1948) was adopted by a vote of 15 – 1. The lone dissenting vote was cast by the representative of Lebanon who stated that the resolution “was tantamount to prejudging the issue.”
May 16, 1948
A New York Times article reported on Law drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League and revealed some of its provisions:
“It [the law] provides that beginning on an unspecified date all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be considered “members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine.”
Their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to “Zionist ambitions in Palestine.” Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.”6
June 21, 1948
The Council referred this matter back to the NGO Committee of ECOSOC which met and reviewed document E/710 (i.e. The World Jewish Congress Memorandum that alluded to “The extreme and imminent danger to Jews residing in the near and Middle East). A resolution “concluded that it should not make specific recommendations regarding the substance of the consultation (WJC Memorandum) unless specifically requested by Council” 7. This circuitous
‘buck passing’ ensured that the matter was never addressed.
5 Report on the Activities of the Political Department (November 15, 1947 – May 15, 1948)
6 New York Times May 16, 1948 “Jews in Grave Danger in All Muslim Lands, Nine hundred thousand in Africa and Asia face wrath of their foes.” by Mallory Browne.
7 Report on the Council NGO Committee (Item 31) (E/940) August 9, 1948

Exhibit E
Text of Law drafted by Political Committee of Arab League

1. Beginning with November 28, 1947, all Jewish citizens of (Name of Arab Country) will be considered as members of the Jewish minority State of Palestine and will have to register with the authorities of the region wherein they reside, giving their names, the exact number of members in their families, their addresses, the names of their banks and the amounts of their deposits in these banks. This formality is to be accomplished within seven days.

2. Beginning with (November 28, 1947), bank accounts of Jews will be frozen. These funds will be utilized in part or in full to finance the movement of resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine.

3. Beginning with (November 28, 1947), only Jews who are subjects of foreign countries will be considered as “neutrals”. These will be compelled either to return to their countries, with a minimum of delay, or be considered as Arabs and obliged to accept active service with the Arab army.

4. Jews who accept active service in Arab armies or place themselves at the disposal of those armies, will be considered as “Arabs”.

5. Every Jew whose activities reveal that he is an active Zionist will be considered as a political prisoner and will be interned in places specifically designated for that purpose by police authorities or by the Government. His financial resources, instead of being frozen, will be confiscated.

6. Any Jew who will be able to prove that his activities are anti-Zionist will be free to act as he likes, provided that he declares his readiness to join the Arab armies.

7. The foregoing (para.6) does not mean that those Jews will not be submitted to paragraphs 1 and 2 of this law.

THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF ARABIC JEWS

 

 

Arab Jews (Photo)

 

Jpost.com

By ASHLEY PERRY

 

Israel is perhaps the least efficient "ethnic cleanser" in the history of mankind, calumnies to the contrary notwithstanding.

In 1947 some 740,000 Palestinians lived in the British Mandate for Palestine. Today, the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza, together with Arab citizens of Israel, comprise a total of over five million Palestinians (altogether over nine million people worldwide refer to themselves as Palestinian.)

Using a popular population growth rate equation, the Palestinian growth rate has been calculated as close to double that of Asia and Africa over a comparable period of time.

Drazen Petrovic defines ethnic cleansing as "a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory." By this definition, only one type of ethnic cleansing has occurred in the Arab-Israeli conflict - that of the Jews of Asia and North Africa. Whereas before 1948 there were nearly 900,000 Jews living in Arab lands, by 2001 only 6,500 remained.

THOSE WHO claim Israel carried out ethnic cleansing of Arabs can point to no official command to that effect. Jewish ethnic cleansing from Arab lands, on the other hand, was often official state policy.

Jews were formally expelled from many areas in the Arab world. The Arab League released a statement urging Arab governments to facilitate the exit of Jews from Arab countries, a resolution which was carried out through a series of punitive measures and discriminatory decrees that made it untenable for Jews to remain in their native lands.

On May 16, 1948, The New York Times recorded a series of measures taken by the Arab League to marginalize and persecute the Jewish residents of Arab League member states. It reported on the "text of a law drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League, which was intended to govern the legal status of Jewish residents of Arab League countries. It provides that, beginning on an unspecified date, all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states would be considered 'members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine.' Their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to 'Zionist ambitions in Palestine.' Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated."

IN 1951, the Iraqi government passed legislation that made affiliation with Zionism a felony and ordered "the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism." This pushed tens of thousands of Jews to leave Iraq, while much of their property was confiscated by the state.

In 1967, many Egyptian Jews were detained and tortured, and Jewish homes confiscated. In Libya that year, the government "urged the Jews to leave the country temporarily," permitting each to take one suitcase and the equivalent of $50.

In 1970, the Libyan government issued new laws confiscating all the assets of Libya's Jews, issuing in their stead 15-year bonds. But when the bonds matured, no compensation was paid. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi justified this on the grounds that "the alignment of the Jews with Israel, the Arab nations' enemy, has forfeited their right to compensation."

These are just a few examples of what would became common measures throughout the Arab world - not to mention the pogroms and attacks on Jews and their institutions that drove a major part of the Jewish exodus.

THE ECONOMIC suffering on the part of the two refugee populations was equally lopsided.

According to the newly released study "The Palestinian Refugee Issue: Rhetoric vs. Reality" by former CIA and State Department Treasury official Sidney Zabludoff in theJewish Political Studies Review, the value of assets lost by both refugee populations is strikingly uneven.

Zabludoff uses data from John Measham Berncastle, who in the early 1950s, under the aegis of the newly formed United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), undertook the task of calculating the assets of the Palestinian refugees. Zabludoff calculates that their assets were worth $3.9 billion in today's currency.

The Jewish refugees, being greater in number and more urban, had almost double those assets.

On top of this equation, it must be taken into account that Israel returned over 90 percent of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Palestinian refugees during the 1950s. This considerably diminishes the UNCCP calculations.

THESE FACTS are conveniently forgotten or not publicized, leaving the way open for Israel-bashers like Exeter University history Prof. Ilan Pappe to omit any mention of the Middle East's greatest ethnic cleansing.

However, a few recent events are clearing the world community's perception of this history. On April 1, the US Congress adopted Resolution 185, which for the first time recognizes Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It urges that the president and US officials participating in Middle East discussions ensure that any reference to Palestinian refugees "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."

Just as importantly, the first-ever hearing in the British parliament on the subject of Jewish refugees from Arab countries takes place today in the House of Lords. It will be convened by Labor MP John Mann and Lord Anderson of Swansea, a joint briefing organized by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) in association with the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Greater recognition of the refugee issue and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the wider Arab world will bring clearer definition of the area's history to a greater number of people.

A people cannot be said to have been "ethnically cleansed" from an area in which it has grown at double the rate of its geographic neighbors. On the other hand, a people that lost more than 150 times its number from an area over the course of a few decades can make a very strong case for having undergone ethnic cleansing.

 

The writer, a political analyst who has worked with many organizations including the Israel Prime Minister's Office, is the editor of the Middle East Strategic Information project.

 

This article can be found at:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214132663726&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull