Tuesday, July 28, 2015

The Forgotten Jewish Middle East Refugees


The Forgotten Jewish Middle East Refugees

 Who are the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa?
Is there a connection between the Palestinian issue and the Jewish refugees from Arab states?
Was there any coordination between Arab governments in the expulsions of the Middle Eastern and North African Jews?
Shouldn't the Palestinian issue be dealt with separately from the Jewish refugees from Arab states?
Wasn't the Arab backlash against Middle Eastern and North African Jews understandable because of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Shouldn't the Jews from Arab states be invited to return to their former homes?
Were Jewish refugees from Arab states treated differently than the Arab refugees from Palestine?
Have the Middle Eastern Jews living in Israel succeeded?

Q. Who are the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa?
A. There has been an uninterrupted presence of large Jewish communities in the Middle East from time immemorial. In the eighth and sixth centuries BCE* Assyria and Babylon respectively conquered the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judea. This marks the beginnings of the ancient Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, some 1,000 years before the Arab Muslim conquests of the these regions -- including the Land of Israel -- and about 2,500 years before the birth of the modern Arab states.
Despite the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, the Land of Israel under various Jewish governments remained the central locale of most of ancient Jewry. Nonetheless, strong and vibrant Jewish communities remained in Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, North Africa and (pre-Muslim) Arabia.
In the 7th century CE, Arab armies under the banner of the new religion of Islam conquered the vast regions of the Middle East and North Africa, encountering indigenous peoples living in their own lands. Over the centuries, through a process of Arabization and Islamicization, these regions are now known as the "Arab world." Yet, non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities, the original indigenous inhabitants, remained as minorities in their own lands.
The 1,400 year history of the Jews under Arab and Muslim rule is a long and varied one. Jews (and Christians) were considered dhimmi, a "protected" group of second-class citizens. The Jews' sojourn in Muslim lands was marked by some golden periods of prosperity, when Jews served as advisors to the ruling class; these periods were often marked by Jewish advances in medicine, business and culture. Jewish philosophy and religious study also flourished. Often, however, the Jews were subjected to punishing taxes, forced to live in cramped ghetto-like quarters and relegated to the lower-levels of the economic and social strata.
In 1948, two refugee populations emerged as a result of the Arab states’ war against the newly established State of Israel: the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews from Arab states. While Jewish refugees were absorbed into Israel and granted citizenship, Palestinian refugees were rarely, with the exception of Jordan, absorbed into their host Arab society.
*BCE (Before the Common Era) is a widely-accepted nonsectarian way to refer to BC (Before Christ).

Q. Is there a connection between the Palestinian issue and the Jewish refugees from Arab states?
A. Yes. Much of the responsibility of the expulsion of the indigenous Jews of the Middle East and North Africa by Arab governments lies with the Palestinian political leadership who engaged in anti-Jewish incitement throughout the Arab world, with the help of Nazi Germany during World War Two, and after the war.
In 1941 pro-Nazi Palestinian nationalist leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, arrived in Berlin, along with many other Palestinian leaders, as a guest of the German Nazi regime. He worked in several capacities for the triumph of the Nazi "new order:" he directed propaganda beamed to the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa as well as Muslims in Asia to elicit rebellion and sabotage against the Allied powers; he was the linchpin for the Nazi espionage network in the Middle East and organizer of saboteurs who were spirited into the area; he organized an Arab Legion to serve with the German Army, and was active recruiting Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans and occupied Russia.  
The Nazis welcomed him and his entourage warmly. He was given a generous stipend and subsidies to sustain five residences and suites at two hotels in Germany. He established an "Arabishes Büro" and a so-called "Jewish Institute" at Nazi expense.
Al-Hussayni asked Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Führer (leader), to apply the same methods against the Jews of the Middle East then being directed against Europe’s Jews.  al-Hussayni drafted a political declaration, which he presented to the Axis allies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in the hope they would adopt it.  In paragraph 7 he would have Germany and Italy  
recognize the rights of Palestine and other Arab countries (to) resolve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and the other Arab countries in the same way as the problem was resolved in the Axis Countries. [1]
(At this time the Jewish “problem” was being “resolved” by Nazi Germany through a program of genocide now known as the Holocaust.) 
Further, in a meeting between Hitler and al-Hussayni, on November 28, 1941, Hitler made this promise to the Palestinian leader:
(the) Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands. [2] (emphasis added)
With these assurances, al-Hussayni voiced his hope for a “final solution” to the Jewish presence in the Middle East in a speech given at a rally in Berlin, on November 2, 1943.   The speech was carried by Nazi Germany’s official radio network, Radio Berlin: 
National Socialist Germany knows the Jews well and has decided to find a final solution for the Jewish danger which will end the evil in the world. The Arabs especially and Muslims in general are obliged to make this their goal, from which they will not stray and which they must reach with all their powers: it is the expulsion of all Jews from Arab and Muslim lands.”[3] (emphasis added)
During the Palestine Partition debate at the United Nations, the Palestinian delegate to the UN, Jamal al-Hussayni, (representing the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine to the UN General Assembly and a nephew of Hajj Amin al-Hussayni), made the following threat:
It must be remembered that there are as many Jews in the Arab world as there are in Palestine whose positions... will become very precarious. Governments in general have always been unable to prevent mob excitement and violence.[4]

Q. Was there any coordination between Arab governments in the expulsions of the Middle Eastern and North African Jews?
A.Yes. The New York Times reported on May 16, 1948 on a series of measures taken by the Arab League to marginalize and persecute the Jewish residents of Arab League member states. The Times article reported on a
"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."
The Times article further reported the following:
"Already in some Moslem states such as Syria and Lebanon there is a tendency to regard all Jews as Zionist agents and 'fifth columnists.' There have been violent incidents with feeling running high. There are indications that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions."
"In Syria a policy of economic discrimination is in effect against Jews. 'Virtually all' Jewish civil servants in the employ of the Syrian Government have been discharged. Freedom of movement has been 'practically abolished.' Special frontier posts have been established to control movements of Jews.
"In Iraq no Jew is permitted to leave the country unless he deposits £5,000 ($20,000) with the Government to guarantee his return. No foreign Jew is allowed to enter Iraq even in transit.
"In Lebanon Jews have been forced to contribute financially to the fight against the United Nations partition resolution on Palestine. Acts of violence agaisnt Jews are openly admitted by the press, which accuses Jews of 'poisoning wells,' etc.
"Conditions vary in the Moslem countries. They are worst in Yemen and Afghanistan, whence many Jews have fled in terror to India. Conditions in most of the countries have deteriorated in recent months, this being particularly true of Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. In the countries farther west along the Mediterranean coast conditions are not so bad. It is feared, however that if a full-scale war breaks out, the repercussions will be grave for Jews all the way from Casablanca to Karachi."
The Times article also makes references to
"statements made by Arab spokesmen during the General Assembly session last autumn, to the effect that if the partition resolution was put into effect, they would not be able to guarantee the safety of the Jews in any Arab land."
The following exceprt from "Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries," by Ya'akov Meron, in The Middle East Quarterly, September 1995 (for the full article, click here) explores the nature of these statements made by the Egyptian, Palestinian and Iraqi delegates to the U.N. during the debate on the partition resolution.
In a key address before the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on November 14, 1947, just five days before that body voted on the partition plan for Palestine, Heykal Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, made the following key statement in connection with that plan:
The United Nations . . . should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries. Partition of Palestine might create in those countries an anti-Semitism even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies were trying to eradicate in Germany. . . If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for the massacre of a large number of Jews.
Heykal Pasha then elaborated on his threat:
A million Jews live in peace in Egypt [and other Muslim countries] and enjoy all rights of citizenship. They have no desire to emigrate to Palestine. However, if a Jewish State were established, nobody could prevent disorders. Riots would break out in Palestine, would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between two races.[5]
Heykal Pasha's thinly veiled threats of "grave disorders," "massacre," "riots," and "war between two races" did not at the time go unnoticed by Jews;[6] for them, it had the same ring as the proposition made six years earlier by the Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni to Hitler of a "final solution" for the Jews of Arab countries, including Palestine (see above). But the statement appears to have made no lasting impression, to the point that a historian of the Jews in Egypt has described Heykal Pasha as "a well-known liberal."[7]
Particularly noteworthy is that although Heykal Pasha spoke at the United Nations in his capacity as a representative of Egypt, he continuously mentioned the Jews "in other Muslim countries" and "all the Arab states," suggesting a level of coordination among the Arab governments. Indeed, four days after his statement, Iraq's Foreign Minister Fadil Jamali declared at the United Nations that "interreligious prejudice and hatred" would bring about a great deterioration in the Arab-Jewish relationship in Iraq and in the Arab world at large,[8] thereby reinforcing the impression that Heykal Pasha was talking not just on behalf of Egypt but for all the independent Arab states. Further confirmation came several days later, after the General Assembly had decided in favor of partitioning Palestine, when, "following orders issued by the Arab League,"[9] Muslims engaged in outrages against Jews living in Aden and Aleppo.[10]
Another indication that Arab rulers coordinated the expulsion of Jews from their terrorites comes from a Beirut meeting one and a half years later of senior diplomats from all the Arab States. By this time, March 1949, the Arab states had already lost the first Arab-Israeli war; they now used this defeat to justify an expulsion that had been officially proclaimed before the war even began. As reported in a Syrian newspaper, "If Israel should oppose the return of the Arab refugees to their homes, the Arab governments will expel the Jews living in their countries."[11]
According to Walid Khalidi, perhaps the leading Palestinian nationalist historian and a highly reputable source, "The (Palestinian) Arabs held their ground throughout the period from November 1947 to March 1948. Up to March 1, not one single Arab village had been vacated by its inhabitants, and the number of people leaving the mixed towns was insignificant."[12] The mass departure from Palestine of 590,000 Arabs began only in April 1948; yet , Heykal Pasha had publicly and very formally announced a program to expel Jews from Arab countries fully five months earlier.

Q. Shouldn't the Palestinian issue be dealt with separately from the Jewish refugees from Arab states?
A.No. The Jews who were forced out of their homes by Arab governments, which then confiscated their property, were the victims of the same aggression carried out by the Arab states against the newly founded State of Israel. On May 15, 1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel with the intention of destroying it and murdering or expelling the Jewish population. Even before this, life for Jews in the Arab states became intolerable.
With the United Nations resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, riots broke out against numerous Jewish communities throughout the Arab world.  Arab mobs attacked Jewish shops and homes; synagogues were burned and looted; hundreds of Jews were murdered in the streets, thousands were imprisoned in the subsequent months, movement was restricted and many Jews were deprived of their citizenship.[13]
Arab governments instituted a number of anti-Jewish actions:  Jews suddenly lost their property; bank accounts belonging to them were frozen, and property – personal and communal – valued at billions in today’s dollars was gradually confiscated.  Jews lost their means of survival; many became hostages in their own countries of origin.  Remaining was becoming increasingly dangerous, and many were compelled to flee in large numbers because of these deteriorating conditions.[14]
As part of an overall Middle East peace accord, the Palestinians' claims must be dealt with fairly and practically and on an equal footing with the Middle Eastern and North African Jews within the framework of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership as part of a peace process resulting in a final settlement and an end to any further claims.

Q. Wasn't the Arab backlash against Middle Eastern and North African Jews understandable because of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
A. No. Just as the backlash against Arab-Americans after September 11 was not "understandable" and has been correctly labeled as racist; just as the backlash against Japanese-Americans in World War Two was racist and unjustified, so too was any Arab backlash against the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa. If the Jews of Arab states were truly seen by their neighbors and governments as equal citizens then the anti-Jewish rioting, massacres and expulsions would not have taken place.
Q. Shouldn't the Jews from Arab states be invited to return to their former homes?
A. Such an invitation exists already, but virtually none of the Jewish refugees or their children, want to return to those lands where they suffered intolerable violence and persecution. They simply want justice. They want the international community to recognize their plight and integrate full compensation of their lost property as part of a final Middle East peace agreement.

Q. Were Jewish refugees from Arab states treated differently than the Arab refugees from Palestine?
A. Yes. Nearly 50 percent of Israel's Jewish population today has their roots in Arab countries, while the Arabs who left Israel constitute less than 2 percent of the total Arab population in Arab states. Even so, the Jewish refugees were - in spite of tremendous difficulties, especially in the early years of Israel's independence - economically and socially absorbed and given a secure haven in the State of Israel, whereas the Palestinian Arab refugees were deliberately herded into refugee camps by their host Arab states, devoid of the minimal conditions for decent life, so that they might become a political and propaganda tool in the hands of the Arab governments in their relentless fight against the State of Israel.
Furthermore, Jewish refugees from Arab states received no financial support whatsoever from the international community: their absorption was financed, to the last cent, by the Israeli government and by their Jewish brethren in Israel and abroad. Jewish refugees from Arab states have not been granted any international political recognition of their plight. There are no UN resolutions calling for this population to receive just compensation and restitution.
Palestinian Arab refugees, on the other hand, have received massive political and material support from the United Nations, whose agencies - primarily the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - have spent billions of dollars, from May 1950 to date, on their maintenance.
Despite Arab propaganda, which has succeeded in establishing the concept of "the legitimate rights of the Palestinians" and their "right of return" in the organs of world public opinion, the world community is only now beginning to recognize the fact that the Jewish refugees from Arab countries have no less legitimate rights, and that these rights should be fully acknowledged and restored.

Q. Have the Middle Eastern Jews living in Israel succeeded?
A. Yes, and no.
In Israel today Middle Eastern and North African Jews are found at all levels of Israeli society. Many members of the Israeli government have their roots in these communities. For example:
  • Silvan Shalom, Minister of Foreign Affairs - Tunisia
  • Meir Sheetrit, Minister Without Portfolio- Morocco
  • Shaul Mofaz, Minister of Defense - Iran
  • Moshe Katsav, President of the State of Israel - Iran
At the same time, social gaps do exist between Ashkenazi (European descent) and Mizrahi (Middle East and North African) Jews. Yet, as Avraham Tal writing in Ha'aretz observes, the gaps are closing:
A review published in The Economic Quarterly by Dr. Shlomo Sitton, a lecturer in economics at the Hebrew University, of a review paper by Iris Jerby and Gal Levy, "Israel: The Socio-economic Gap," examines their argument that "inequality between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim has not been erased and is even becoming sharper in many areas." Sitton comes to the conclusion that the gap is actually narrowing and gives examples from four areas, based on the authors' research data and the government's Statistical Yearbook:
  • Education levels: Between 1986-87 and 1994-95 (the period covered by the study), the percentage of Askenazi Jews (of European and American origin, first and second generations) who earned high school matriculation certificates rose from 42 to 50 percent. Among Mizrahi Jews (of Asian and African origin, first and second generation), this rate increased from 23 to 34 percent. The gap exists, but narrowed from 19 percent to 16 percent. A similar trend is evident in higher education, where from 1975-76 to 1994-95 the percentage of Israelis earning Bachelor's degrees rose from 17 to 27 percent among Ashkenazim and from 14 to 23 percent among Mizrahim.
  • Living conditions: While the proportion of people living in conditions of less than one person per room rose slightly between 1992 and 1998 among Ashkenazim born abroad - from 53 to 56 percent - the increase among Mizrahim born abroad rose from 31 to 51 percent to nearly close the gap).
  • Employment, by type of profession: the ethnic gap in the higher professions is still large - 38 percent of first-generations Ashkenazim held these positions in 1998, compared to 23 percent of their Mizrahi counterparts; for the second generation, the percentages are 52 and 25 percent, respectively. But since 1991 the gaps have closed slightly, from 18 to 15 percent among the first generation and from 29 to 27 percent in the second.
  • Income: Here, Sitton relies on an article by Dr. Jimmy Weinblatt, Dean of the Department of Humanities at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, "The Employment Market in a Pluralistic Society," in a book published by the Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. Weinblatt reaches the conclusion that the wage gap between urban salaried employees born in Europe and America and those born in Asia and Africa (first-generation in both cases) nearly closed between 1985 and 1997. (A contributory factor may have been the still-low income levels among immigrants from the CIS). Among the second generation, the gap widened somewhat "but one cannot speak of a true deepening" of the gap.
[1] On July 22, 1991 the New York Post reported that the Wiesenthal Center had discovered this document in the UN archives on July 2, 1991.
[2] From notes taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt as quoted in Gerald Fleming's Hitler and the Final Solution, p. 101-104, University of California Press (1988).  Also Geheime Reichssache 57 a/41, Records Dept. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Pa/2
[3] Text of Hajj Amin al-Hussayni’s speech of 2 November, 1943, National Archives, Washington, D.C. T60/2576066-9
[4] United Nations, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Records of Meetings, September 25, 1947, Lake Success, New York
[5] U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Summary Records of Meetings, Lake Success, N.Y., Sept. 25-Nov. 15, 1947, p. 185.
[6] For example, Emile Najjar, the last president of the Egyptian Zionist Federation and a future Israeli diplomat, pointed out Heykal Pasha's remarks in a lecture delivered in Paris at the Centre d'Etudes de Politique Etrangére on Dec. 20, 1947.
[7] Gurdron Krämer, "Aliyatah u-shki'atah shel Kehilat Kahir," Pe'amim, Spring 1981, pp. 28-30-34.
[8] U.N. General Assembly, Second Session, Official Records, Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meeting, vol. II, 110th-128th meetings, Lake Success, N.Y., Sept. 16-Nov. 29, 1947, p. 1391.
[9] H.J. Cohen, The Jews of the Middle East, 1860-1972 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973), p. 67.
[10] Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 57, records 75 victims of the Aleppo massacre.
[11] Al-Kifah, Mar. 28, 1949, quoted Shlomo Hillel, Ruah Kadim (Jerusalem: 'Idanim, 1985) p. 244. This book is available in English as Operation Babylon, trans. Ina Friedman (New York: Doubleday, 1987).
[12] Walid Khalidi, "Plan Dalet, Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine," Middle East Forum, Nov. 1961, p. 27.
[13] Maurice M. Roumani, The Case of the Jews From Arab Countires: A Neglected Issue, World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, Tel Aviv (1978).
[14] Ibid
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