Isn’t it a fair ‘population exchange’ between Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees from many Arab countries?
As it will be demonstrated below, this argument was concocted to deflect the discussion from the one of the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (the collective dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people). It should be noted that the “Jewish state” and Zionism were created in response to the rise of anti Semitism in Europe and not in the Middle East. Ironically, Jewish historians still associate Jewish Golden Age not in Europe, not in the United States of America, but in Arab ruled Spain (Andalusia) and Muslim Turkey:
1- It’s a known fact that most, if not all, of the Arab Jews were under the direct and indirect control of the British and French occupations, who were (and still are) very sympathetic to the Zionist cause. So even if it was “true” that Arab Jews were “expelled” from their countries, this could have been easily stopped by the friendly colonial powers.
2- Very little evidence exists that Arab populations or Arab authorities, in the various Arab nations, were involved in ‘expelling’ their Arab Jewish minorities. The Arab Jewish minority may had been a victim of sporadic revenge attacks (in response to Zionist atrocities perpetrated against Palestinians during the 1948 war), however, there is no proof whatsoever that this violence was organized by any group (state or non-state) whatsoever.
3- Arab Jewish immigration has occurred in stages as the “Jewish state” was able to absorb them. First priority was given to the Western/Ashkenazi Jews, whom according to Moshe Sharitt (first Israeli Foreign Minister) are considered the “….salt of the earth…”(1949, The First Israelis, p. 173), and when many preferred to go to America, they turned to Arab Jews to populate Palestine in the early 1950s and 1960s, and when that was not enough the Jewish Agency turned to the Falashas (Ethiopian Black Jews) and Russian Jews. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that early on Ben-Gurion(the first Israeli Prime Minister) made sure that the priorities of the newly founded “Jewish state” should be ‘Alyah (or immigration in Hebrew) rather than peace with its Arab neighbors (Righteous Victims, p. 263).
4- It should be noted that the vast majority of the vibrant and assimilated Turkish Jewish community immigrated to Israel despite Turkey’s early recognition of the “Jewish state” in 1949. So the immigration of Jews from a friendly Muslim and Arab countries (not only from a non-Arab nation like Turkey, but also from Morocco, Tunisia, and even the Persian majority nation of Iran under the Shah before the Islamic Revolution of 1979) was being encouraged by the Jewish Agency.
5- Ironically, the policy that encouraged Arab Jews to immigrate to Israel is still being used towards French, Argentinean, Russian, Central Asian, and American Jews. In a nutshell, this policy is governed by absorption capacity for the “Jewish state”, which has always preferred Western Jews over Jews from Arab and Muslim countries.
6- The Jewish Agency facilitated the transportation of the Arab Jews to Israel by bribing many of the local Arab and Muslim (as in the case of Iran) officials. For example, many of the Iraqi Jews were transported to the “Jewish state” via Iraqi Airways after bribing Nuri al-Said (the Iraqi PM at the time) and his wife (al Nakba wa al-Firdous al Mafqoud by ‘Aref al-‘Aref). Similarly, the Yemeni Jews were transported to Israel via friendly airlines. Ironically, the Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) were forgotten next door as their Yemeni brothers were being flown from Aden; they were picked up thirty years later (via Sudan’s airports) after bribing President Numari of Sudan! Additionally there was Secret operation Yakhin that was conducted by the Mossad between November 1961 and spring 1964. About 97,000 left for Israel by plane and ship from Casablanca and Tangier via France and Italy. An economic arrangement was agreed between Israel and Morocco, with the agreement of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and King Hassan II of Morocco, whereby $500,000 would be paid as a downpayment, plus $100 per emigrant for the first 50,000 Moroccan Jews, and then, $250 per emigrant thereafter.
7-When Arab Jews were hesitant to leave, Zionist gangs resorted to intimidating them by throwing bombs into their synagogues, as it was the case with the Iraqi Jews ( you can search and see for yourself the Related Articles section for details).
8-As it has been the case with Moroccan and Tunisian Jews, Arab Jews who left their counties can return back and reclaim their citizenships and properties; that is their basic human right.
9- It is a fact that the Iraqi Government issued a plea on December 11, 1975 to its Jewish citizens living abroad to come back to Iraq.
10- When many Arab authorities blocked the immigration of their Jewish citizens to Israel, the Jewish Agency and many Western embassies protested, as in the case of Syria.
11-When so-called ‘population exchanges” happen, it occurs as an agreement between two or more sovereign nations, such as in the Greek/Turkish ‘exchange’ agreement of 1923. On the other hand there was not and is no alleged “population exchange” agreement in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a nutshell, to ethnically cleanse (illegal, violent compulsory population transfer) the people of a whole nation and to replace them with settlers from another group of people cannot be called a ‘population exchange’, but rather a war crime.
12- It should be noted that in the case of the Palestinian people there is a UNGA resolution 194 that calls for their return plus compensation (which has been reaffirmed by the world body over 150 times since Sept. 17th, 1948). On the other hand, there is no such resolution for Arab Jews since it is not needed to begin with because there is no Arab country that blocks the return of its Jewish citizens. Furthermore, the Palestinian people always demanded their return at all levels (individually and collectively) since 1948; and Arab Jews never call for their right of return but mostly they demand compensation. In other words, the Palestinian people demand to return even under Israeli rule, but until this date there is no organized body in the Arab Jewish community in Israel calling for their own return to their respective Arab countries.
13- Beside the previous point, often Arab Jews react negatively when called refugees. For example, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: “
We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations.”
Similarly Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy:“
I don’t regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists.”
In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically:
“I have this to say: I am not a refugee.” He added: “I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee.”
14- The “Jewish state” was founded by Zionists in response to European anti-Semitism, not Arab anti- Semitism. It should be emphasized that if it was not for European anti-Semitism, Jews and Palestinians would have stayed in their original home towns or countries as it had been the case for thousands of years. In other words, the “Jewish state” was founded to “save” European Jews; not the Arab Jews.
15-According to Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN on 10 December 1948 any person has the right to leave his/her home town and has the full right to come back to it. Such a right does not diminish over time. This is one of the basics of human rights. So any Arab Jews still have this basic inherent right.
16-For decades, the Arab Jewish population in Israel were heavily discriminated against by the Ashkenazi Jews, who kept them in refugee camps (Ma’baruts) living in tents for a very long time. For many, it was much easier to hire Israeli Palestinians than the Arab Jews living in Israel. It should be noted that the case of 300+ kidnapped Yemeni kids (who were later adopted by Ashkenazi families) have not been closed to this date.
If all of the previous points had no value whatsoever, what does the Palestinian people have to do with what happened in MENA countries ? How is this comparable?Ironically, Zionism , and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians , led to all of this, yet Zionists still wish to change history and throw the blame on someone else.
The Government of Iraq ran full page advertisements calling for the return of its Iraqi Jews who had fled their country Iraq after the breakout of the 1948 war.
On December 11, 1975, the Government of Iraq ran full page advertisements in the New York Times, the Toronto Star, and Paris newspaper Le Monde calling for the return of Iraqi Jews who had fled after the breakout of the 1948 war. The idea behind these ads, and several other statements issued by the governments of Syria, Egypt, and the Sudan, among others, was to neutralize the Israeli claim that hundreds of thousands of Jews settling in the new state were refugees on par with the Palestinians who had fled to Arab countries. This claim was (and still is) a key part of the argument against the Palestinian demand for right of return.
It should be noted that the piece is almost entirely accurate from a historical perspective: despite widespread rioting, there was little government pressure forcing the Jews to leave.
The text of the ad, obtained from ProQuest Historical Newspaper Service (note that grammatical errors, and there are quite a few, were retained):
IRAQI JEWS INVITED TO RETURN TO IRAQ
The Revolution Command Council (RCC) adopted on November 26, 1975 an important resolution which entitles all Iraqi Jews who left Iraq since 1948 to return home and enjoy equal rights with all Iraqi citizens. The resolution also stipulates that the Iraqi Government shall guarantee to the returning Jews full constitutional rights, equality and secure living without any discrimination.
This decision by the Revolution Command Council (RCC) stems from the adherence, by the Iraqi Government, to the principles of the UN charter and to the universal declaration of rights.
This decision of the Revolution Command Council (RCC) constitutes concerete evidence that Iraqis and Arabs never harboured malice or vindictiveness against Jews. In fact Jews have lived among Arabs since medieval ages and throughout the ages there was mutual trust, respect, and happy co-existence between them.History is full of examples of Arab-Jewish cooperation. Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not preach hate and the concept of exclusivity. On the contrary, they preach love and brotherhood. As long as these basic fundamental tenets were adhered to, there blossomed understanding, mutual respect and cooperation. But as soon as these principles were abandoned, cooperation was replaced by confrontation.
The Jews, as long as they adhered to the true principles of Judaism, lived in peace among Christians and Moslems everywhere. But when the Zionist Jews began to propagate the myth of “A Chosen People”, when they converted Judaism into Zionism–which is a racist movement and when they began to turn religion into a nationality and when all led to the expulsion of Arab Palestinians from their homeland, the Zionists committed a sin against the very tenets of Judaism. They excluded themselves by erroneously regarding themselves as belonging to some mythical “superior race”. This racist claim therefore, rightly earned the Zionist, condemnation universally.
It should be noted that the Arabs have always distinguished between Judaism and Zionism. The former is a religion which the Arabs, like all others, respect.The latter, however, is a racist movement directed particularly against the Palestinian Arabs and, consequently, vehemently opposed by Arabs and justice minded people the world over.
The Arabs, have no quarrel with Jews–provided that they are not Zionists. And in keeping with this, Iraq now calls upon all Iraqi Jews who left the country since 1948 to return and enjoy all rights accorded to Iraqi citizens.
It should be known that the Iraqi Jews who left the country after 1948 left on their own. No one was expelled. In addition to that Iraqi Jews enjoyed a prosperous life in Iraq before they unilaterally decided- under Zionist instigation and terror-to leave the country.
Given the economic crisis gripping the Jews in the Zionist entity, it goes without saying that Iraqi Jews returning home are assured of a much better standard of life.
The resolution, signed by President Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr in his capacity as the Revolution Command Council Chairman, is as follows:
“Pursuant to the provisions of para A, Article 42 of the interim constitution, in keeping with the Iraqi Government’s belief in human rights, and by virtue of Iraq’s adherence to the principles and rights provided for in the UN charter and in the declaration of human rights.
The Revolutionary Command Council sitting on November 26, 1975,resolved as follows:
- Iraqi Jews who left iraqi since 1948 are hereby entitled to return home.
- All Iraqi Jews returning to Iraq under this resolution shall enjoy all lawful rights of Iraqi citizens under law.
- The Iraqi Government shall guarantee to the returning Jews full constitutional rights enjoyed by Iraqi citizens. This will include equality and secure living without any discrimination.
- This resolution shall by published in the official Gazette and shall be enforced by the Ministers concerned.”
The Government of the Republic of Iraq
Embassy of Iraq
1801 P Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
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 UNas “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 hom
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.
Links and References
- Now it can be told By by Tom Segev
- The Joe Golan Affair By Tom Segev
- BEN GURION’S SCANDALS By Naeim Giladi.
- The Jews of Iraq By Naeim Giladi
- Hitching a ride on the magic carpet By Yehouda Shenhav.
- The forgotten refugees: the causes of the post-1948 Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries By Philip Mendes
- 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 Mizrahi Yammni Rabbi Shlomo Korah. The interview was extracted from Occupied Minds By Arthur Nelsen
- Iraqi Government advertisements calling for the return of its Jews citizens who had fled their country Iraq after the breakout of the 1948 war
- Photos: The unknown story of Yemen’s Jews By Yediot Aharonot
- Myths about Jewish refugees from Arab countries By Henry Lowi
- Video: Zionism versus Judaism By Naturi Karata.
- From Haven To Heaven: Changes in Immigration Patterns To Israel
- 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.)
- 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.