Palestinians are not the only people to have been subjected to population transfer, it is normal in human history!

Increasingly, this argument has become the response of many Israelis and Zionists to the Palestinian Right of Return. Slowly, but surely, the argument that Palestinians left their homes based on their free will (check this article) has been losing ground to newly discovered historical facts in the Zionist sector (old facts for Palestinians), thanks to Israeli revisionist historians, who based their research on declassified Israeli and Zionist archives.

It’s misleading to compare the population transfer that occurred in the aftermath of WWII to the one that came upon the Palestinian people for the following reasons:

1-It’s true that population transfer occurred in Europe in the aftermath of WWII, however, it was neither politically motivated nor enforced by armed might. It should be noted that many Displaced Persons (D.P.) refugee camps sprang up all over Europe soon after the war. However, that was mostly done for economic and not for political reasons. Soon after the war, Europe’s economy and infrastructure were devastated, and to stabilize it the U.S. sponsored the Marshal Plan to help Europe help itself.

Non-politically motivated population transfer was and still is happening around the world, and it is not restricted to Europe only. On the other hand, “transferring” a whole minority (actually, in the case of Palestinians it was the 2/3 majority that was “transferred” by the “Jewish minority”) to achieve political objectives is nothing but sheer TERROR. If this is not accepted, then:

What were the war crimes perpetrated in Bosnia and Kosovo? Why, when Slobodan Milosevic used such excuses, was he condemned and tried as a war criminal?

Since “population transfer” allegedly occurred in Europe during WWII, and it’s excusable for the “Jewish minority” in Palestine to use such forced “transfer” of a people in order to become the majority, then:

Why the same excuse can’t be used by the Slavic majority to “transfer” the “unwanted” Albanian Muslim minority?

2-Soon after the 1948 war, the Palestinian people lost almost everything they owned, such as farms, businesses, buses, factories, railroads, boats, banks, … etc., and above all, they lost their political and civil rights. Note that none of the European nations (such as the German, French, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, etc. nations) had their political, economical, and civil rights removed. What’s fundamentally unique about what happened to the Palestinian nation is that their political, civil, and economic rights as a people have been all removed in favor of the “Jewish minority”.

3-Assuming that forcible population transfer really occurred in Europe, the questions which beg to be asked are:

Should such policies be the norm, or the exception? 

If the alleged forcible population transfer really happened in Europe, is it excusable to practice such polices? 

Is “forcible population transfer” a war crime?

4-Assuming for the moment that the act of forcible population transfer is not a war crime, then Would you condone such practices against other people? If the conundrum has not been yet comprehended, then would you accept such policies against the Jewish citizens of Russian, Poland, Germany, … etc.?

It’s worth noting that when Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, it included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing) which was classified as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

It should be emphasized that, even prior to the population transfer which resulted from WWII, the Zionist leaders were keen on creating a “Jewish State” based on a “Jewish majority” by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a “Jewish majority” was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann and many others) concluded that “population transfer” was the only solution to what they referred to as the “Arab Problem.”

Year after year, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the “transfer solution” (Check the article)

Often Israelis and Zionists view WW II population transfer as a legal precedent, however, when asked to put up the details, they fail to come up even with one example which is not already a war crime. On the contrary, after considering the compulsory population transfer that Josef Stalin perpetrated against the people of the Caucasus during WWII, the truth cannot be more of a paradox. In 1943-44, Stalin ordered the whole population of the Caucasus to be expelled to Siberia as a collective punishment for their collaboration with the Nazis. However, the same people were allowed to return home in 1958 when the scale of the war crime became known to the Soviet premier at the time. So if the people of the Caucasus were allowed to return to their homes under Communist rule, how come Palestinian refugees (who had nothing to do with Nazi atrocities) cannot use this return as a legal precedent to return to their homes, farms, plantations, businesses, boats, banks, ports, …etc. under Israeli rule?

Finally, it must be emphasized that the “Jewish people”, of all peoples, should deplore such lame arguments. Ironically, European Jews were the first victims of politically motivated population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing), and it’s the ultimate hypocrisy when Israelis and Zionists use such an excuse to practice and promote Ethnic Cleansing. If such war crimes were practiced against Jews in the past, that’s no excuse to practice or attempt to justify similar war crimes against the Palestinian people.

-OverDose

The truth behind Israeli propaganda on the ‘expulsion’ of Arab Jews by Joseph Massad

Israel’s outrageous fabrications about the immigration of Arab Jews to Israel in the 1940s and 50s are an attempt to mask the injustices meted out to Palestinians

Israeli propaganda about the “expulsion” of Arab Jews from Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s continues without respite. Earlier this month, Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he “intends to submit a draft resolution requiring the international body to hold an annual commemoration for the hundreds of thousands of Jews exiled from Arab countries due to the creation of the State of Israel,” according to a report in Ynet.

The history of Arab Jewish immigration to Israel is not one of expulsion by Arab regimes, but rather one of Israeli criminal actions and conspiracies

Israel’s fabrications about the immigration of Arab Jews to Israel are so outrageous that the country holds a commemoration on 30 November each year. This date just happens to coincide with the ethnic cleansing by Zionist gangs of Palestine, which began on 30 November 1947, a day after the UN General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan. The choice of date seeks to implicate Arab Jews in the conquest of Palestine, when most had no role in it.

Erdan alleges that, after the establishment of the Israeli settler-colony, Arab countries “launched a widespread attack against the State of Israel and the thriving Jewish communities that lived within [the Arab world]”. Israeli fabrications, with which Israel always hoped to force Arab countries into paying Israel billions of dollars, have a second important goal: to exonerate Israel from its original sin of expelling Palestinians in 1948 and stealing their land and property.

Ideological pitfalls:

In December 1948, the UN General Assembly mandated that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return home and that they be compensated for the destruction and theft of their property by Israel. Israel not only wants to hold on to all of those lands, but to extort Arab countries to pay out billions more.

There is a further irony to the Israeli ploy: Israel has always insisted that Palestine, and later Israel, is the homeland of world Jewry, while simultaneously claiming that Arab Jews who immigrated to Israel are “refugees”. The legal and internationally accepted definition of a refugee, however, is of a person who was expelled or fled their homeland, not one who “returns” to their homeland.

President of the Egyptian Jewish Community Magda Shehata Haroun at the Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue in Cairo on 3 October, 2013 (AFP)

These ideological pitfalls aside, the history of Arab Jewish emigration to Israel is not one of expulsion by Arab regimes, but rather one of Israeli criminal actions that forced Jews in Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt and other countries to leave for Israel. In 1949, the Israeli government was working assiduously with British colonial authorities in Aden and with Yemeni officials to airlift Yemeni Jews to Israel.

While the League of Arab States had resolved to ban the emigration of Arab Jews to Israel, Yemen’s imam allowed Jews to leave as early as February 1949, with the help of Zionist emissaries and Israeli bribes to provincial Yemeni rulers, according to prominent Israeli historian Tom Segev’s book: 1949: The First Israelis.

Some provincial rulers asked that at least 2,000 Jews remain, as it was the religious duty of Muslims to protect them, but the Zionist emissary insisted that it was a Jewish religious “commandment” for them to go to the “Land of Israel”. The fact that Israel’s prime minister at the time was David Ben Gurion also suggested to many that Israel “was the kingdom of David,” according to Segev and other sources. Tens of thousands of Jews were urged to leave their homes and travel to Israel.

Institutionalized discrimination:

As for the Jews who opted to stay, the Jewish emissary in Aden, Shlomo Schmidt, asked permission to propose that Yemeni authorities expel them, but Yemeni authorities did not.

Some of the luggage of the departing Jews, including ancient Torah scrolls, jewellery and embroidered garments, which they were encouraged to bring with them, disappeared en route and mysteriously “made their way to antique and souvenir shops in Israel,” according to Segev and other sources.

About 50,000 Yemeni Jews were essentially removed from Yemen by the Israelis in 1949 and 1950 to face institutionalised Ashkenazi discrimination in Israel.This included the abduction of hundreds of Yemeni children from their parents, who were told the children died; the children were then allegedly handed over for adoption to Ashkenazi couples. Zionists were also active in bringing about the emigration of Morocco’s Jews to Israel. Morocco was under French colonial occupation at the time, so the Jewish Agency had to strike an agreement with the French governor of Morocco to bring about the emigration of Moroccan Jews, who had to face horrific conditions on Israeli ships, according to Segev and other sources. Some of the 100,000 Jews who left, according to the Jewish Agency emissary, had to be virtually “taken aboard the ships by force”.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Said, Britain’s strongman in the Arab east, was maligned by Israeli propaganda that it was persecuting Jews, when in fact these were Israeli fabrications. Zionist agents had been active in Iraq, smuggling Jews through Iran to Israel, which led to the prosecution of a handful of Zionists.

Then, attacks on Iraqi Jews began, including at the Masuda Shemtov synagogue in Baghdad, killing four Jews and wounding around a dozen more. Some Iraqi Jews believed that this was the work of Mossad agents, aiming to scare Jews into leaving the country. Iraqi authorities accused and executed two activists from the Zionist underground.

Amid Israel’s global campaign to pressure Iraq into allowing Jews to leave – which led to Israeli attempts to block a World Bank loan to Iraq, accompanied by American and British pressure – the Iraqi parliament relented and issued a law permitting Jews to leave. Zionist agents in Iraq telegraphed their handler in Tel Aviv: “We are carrying on our usual activity in order to push the law through faster.” Iraq’s 120,000 Jews were thus soon transferred to Israel.

Targeting western interests:

Among Egypt’s relatively small Jewish community, an even smaller number were Ashkenazi (mostly from Alsace and Russia) who arrived since the 1880s. The larger community consisted of Sephardi Jews who arrived during the same period from Turkey, Iraq and Syria, in addition to the tiny community of Karaite Jews. All in all, they numbered fewer than 70,000 people, half of whom did not hold Egyptian nationality.

Zionist activism among the small community of Ashkenazi Jews in Egypt led some to go to Palestine before 1948. However, it was after the establishment of Israel that many of Egypt’s upper-class Jews began to leave to France, not Israel. Nonetheless, the community remained essentially intact until Israel intervened in 1954, recruiting Egyptian Jews for an Israeli terrorist cell that placed bombs in Egyptian cinemas, the Cairo train station as well as American and British educational institutions and libraries.

The Israelis hoped that by targeting western interests in Egypt, they could sour the then friendly relations between Egypt’s president and the Americans. 

Egyptian intelligence uncovered the Israeli terrorist ring and tried the accused in open court. The Israelis mounted an international campaign against Egypt and president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was dubbed “Hitler on the Nile” by the Israeli and western press, while Israeli agents shot at the Egyptian consulate in New York, according to David Hirst’s book The Gun and the Olive Branch and other sources.

Combined with the new socialist and nationalist campaign of Egyptianising investments in the country, many rich businessmen began to sell their businesses and leave.

By the time nationalisation began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most of the nationalised businesses were in fact owned by Egyptian Muslims and Christians, not Jews. It was in this context, and in the context of public rage against Israel, that many Egyptian Jews got scared and left after 1954 to the US and France, while the poor ended up in Israel (as recounted in Joel Beinin’s Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry).

When Israel joined the British-French conspiracy to invade Egypt in 1956, and after its military occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, public rage ensued against the settler-colony.The Egyptian government detained about 1,000 Jews, half of whom were Egyptian citizens, according to Beinin, and Egypt’s small Jewish community began to leave in droves. On the eve of Israel’s second invasion of Egypt in 1967, only 7,000 Jews remained in the country.

Formal invitations:

Despite Israeli culpability in bringing about the exodus of Arab Jews from their countries, the Israeli government continues to blame it on Arab governments.As for the property of Arab Jews, indeed, they should be fully entitled to it and/or to compensation – not on account of some fabricated expulsion narrative that serves the interests of the Israeli state, but on account of their actual ownership.

Contrary to Israeli propaganda that there was a population swap, it is notable that while European and Arab Jews who emigrated to Israel were given the stolen land and properties of expelled Palestinians free of charge, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris and other sources, the Palestinians did not receive the property of the Arab Jews who migrated to Israel. Indeed, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which in 1974 received recognition by the Arab League and the UN as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,”was very aware of this Israeli strategy. Understanding that the emigration of Arab Jews to Israel was a boon to the Israeli settler-colony, the PLO demanded, in a much-publicized 1975 memorandum to the Arab governments whose Jewish populations had left to Israel, that they issue formal and public invitations for Arab Jews to return home.

Notably, none of the governments and regimes in power in 1975 were in office when the Jews left between 1949 and 1967.Public and open invitations were duly m issued by the governments of m Morocco, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Egypt for Arab Jews to return home, especially in light of the institutionalized Ashkenazi racist discrimination to which they had been subjected in Israel. Neither Israel nor its Arab Jewish communities heeded the calls.

A picture dated before 1937 during the British Mandate in Palestine shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of Jerusalem against the Jewish immigration to Palestine (AFP)

Rewarding crimes:

All this aside, there is the matter of Israel’s unceasing attempts to equate the financial losses of Arab Jews with those of Palestinian refugees.A conservative official Israeli estimate comparing Palestinian property losses to Arab Jewish property losses gave a ratio of 22 to one in favour of Palestinians – despite Israel’s gross overestimation of Arab Jewish losses and even grosser underestimation of Palestinian losses. Researchers’ conservative estimates of Palestinian refugee losses amount to more than $300bn in 2008 prices, excluding damages for psychological pain and suffering, which would raise the total substantially. This excludes the losses in confiscated land and property for Palestinian citizens of Israel since 1948, and the losses incurred by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1967.

Whereas none of the Arab regimes in power when Arab Jews emigrated to Israel exists today, the same Israeli colonial settler regime that expelled the Palestinian people and engineered the exodus of Arab Jews from their countries remains in power.

Yet, in his letter, Erdan complains that “it is infuriating to see the UN mark a special day and devote a lot of resources for the issue of ‘Palestinian refugees,’ while abandoning and ignoring hundreds of thousands of Jewish families deported from Arab countries and Iran”. The irony of Erdan’s letter is that it demands that the Israeli regime be financially and morally rewarded for the crimes it has committed over the last seven decades.

–OverDose

Links and References

1- Now it can be told By by Tom Segev https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/1.4900019

2- The Joe Golan Affair By Tom Segev https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/1.4888213

3- BEN-GURION’S SCANDALS How the Hagannah and The Mossad Eliminated Jews by Naeim Giladi. Available for the first time since it was banned in the US and Israel. When Giladi first came upon the research material he used for this book, he was shocked. He did not believe that Jews would kill other Jews for political objectives. Never before has anything been published like this. These are all true and shocking facts.

BEN-GURION’S SCANDALS

4- The Jews of Iraq By Naeim Giladi http://www.inminds.com/jews-of-iraq.html

5- Hitching a ride on the magic carpet By Yehouda Shenhav. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/1.5361803

6- THE FORGOTTEN REFUGEES: the causes of the post-1948 Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries By Philip Mendes

THE FORGOTTEN REFUGEES

7- Interview with a former Mossad Agent Yehuda Tajar who was stationed in Iraq in the early 1950s. The interview was extracted from Occupied Minds By Arthur Nelsen

Interview with a former Mossad Agent Yehuda Tajar

8- Interview with a Mizrahi Yammni Rabbi Shlomo Korah. The interview was extracted from Occupied Minds By Arthur Nelsen

Interview with a Mizrahi Yammni Rabbi Shlomo Korah

9- Iraqi Government advertisements calling for the return of its Jews citizens who had fled their country Iraq after the breakout of the 1948 war

Iraqi Government advertisements

10- Photos: The unknown story of Yemen’s Jews By Yediot Aharonot https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3541413,00.html

11- Myths about Jewish refugees from Arab countries By Henry Lowi

12- Video: Zionism versus Judaism By Naturi Karata.

13- From Haven To Heaven: Changes in Immigration Patterns To Israel http://www.columbia.edu/~yc2444/From%20Haven%20to%20Heaven-Changes%20in%20Immigration%20Patterns%20to%20Israel.pdf

14- Film:Return to Morocco by Charlotte Bruneau, (Moroccan Jews were persuaded to leave their homes and move to Israel by strong Zionist Propaganda. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, played a key role in convincing thousands of Moroccan Jews that they were in danger and covertly facilitated their departure.) https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/phone/return-to-morocco.html

15- Avi Shlaim جسور | مع Avraham “Avi” Shlaim FBA (born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy.