Two Articles on the Attempt to Link Arab Jews and Palestinian Refugees

[David Shasha]

Revisionism, Rejectionism, and Arab-Israeli Peace

By: Irwin Cotler

 

Although I have dealt with the spurious use of the issue of Middle Eastern Jews as “refugees” equivalent to Palestinians by Zionist HASBARAH, I think that it is appropriate to address the issue again in order to make clear a number of points in the context of this article:

 

1. Whenever there seems to be even a hint of sympathy for Palestinians and their claims, the Zionists come out with the issue of Arab Jews as the moral equivalent of Palestinians.  It seems as if it is necessary for Israel and its Diaspora supporters to refuse the legitimacy of the independent claims of the Palestinians who were made refugees in 1948.  The integrity of Palestinian claims is to be addressed by counterclaims such as those made in this article.

 

2. As shown in the article which follows by our good friend Yehouda Shenhav, the basis of this equivalence is spurious.  Arab Jews and Palestinians have two different histories and their experiences are not similar.

 

3. Arab Jews were not subject to formal expulsion orders by their government officials. Each case is based on specific circumstances unique to the individual Arab countries.  The case of Morocco is not the same as that of Iraq, the case of Egypt not the same as that of Syria, and so on.

 

4. Prior to 1948 the status of Jews in the Arab world was in a state of flux.  Some Jews chose to identify with the emerging independence movements while others did not.  There is no one rule governing the situation.

 

5. In the specific case of Egypt, Chief Rabbi Haim Nahum Effendi counseled the community to become Egyptian citizens and remain faithful to their homeland.  Most Egyptian Jews neglected to follow his advice creating quite variable results.  The difficulty stemmed from both the changing citizenship laws, as well as the ability of Egyptian Jews to receive foreign (European) citizenship that would provide them with socio-economic advantages.  Egyptian Jews were affected by new and discriminatory laws regarding employment, property ownership, and general civic status that fluctuated over time until it became impossible for most of them to remain in the country.  Such discriminatory laws occasionally spilled over into an unknown number of outright expulsions, particularly at the time of the 1956 Suez war.  But, contrary to the common assumption, a significant number of Jews remained until the 1967 war and a very small community remains there today.  This issue can be multiplied exponentially on a country-by-country basis throughout the Middle East and North Africa where historic Jewish communities were largely disbanded putting an end to centuries of Jewish history in the Arab-Muslim world.

 

6. This leads us to mention the role of Israel and Zionism in the complexity of Arab Jewish life.  On the one hand, Israel has maintained that Arab Jews are members of the Jewish nation and are part of Israel.  That they were or were not expelled from Arab countries should then not be relevant to any peace negotiation.  Beyond this, as Shenhav shows in his research, the Zionists, prior to 1948, interfered in the lives of Arab Jews by sending emissaries to their communities to “encourage” them to emigrate to Palestine.  It was this process that helped to accelerate the anti-Jewish sentiment in Arab countries and identify the native Jews exclusively with Israel and Zionism.

 

7. Arab Jews who moved to Diaspora countries are not legally represented by Israel.   Any possible property claims should not be adjudicated by Israel, but by the individuals wherever they might live.  Such claims should be made, but the proper way for such claims to be made is by individuals and organizations accountable to the individuals and not to the State of Israel.  Palestinian claims are rightly addressed by their political leadership.

 

8. In this sense, the so-called “Sephardic” groups that have sprung up around this issue – JIMENA, HARIF, JJAC – are often tied to Zionist-Israeli institutions, governmental and non-governmental alike, which help them advocate on behalf of the issue.  Mr. Cotler himself is the founder of the JJAC – Justice for Jews from Arab Countries – and the way in which he connects the “refugee” issue to Israel bespeaks a linkage that is not necessarily valid in terms of individual claimants and their legal rights.  As a lawyer, Mr. Cotler should be aware of this.

 

9. But perhaps most important of all is the manner in which the “refugee” issue has become one of the only means that Arab Jews are permitted to be represented in the Jewish world today.  Having lost any sense of their ancestral culture – much of it tied to that of the Arab world, a world that is now hated and despised as the enemy of Israel – Arab Jews are undergoing a historic erosion of their civilization.  Israel thus wishes to accelerate the process of cultural evisceration while at the same time seeking to validate the material claims of Arab Jews when it suits its purposes.

 

10. Arab Jews have not been successful at maintaining their culture in Israel and have for decades been subject to various forms of social discrimination and cultural exclusion in what is in effect an Ashkenazi-dominated Israel.  Having lost their cultural autonomy, it seems that all Arab Jews are good for is to act as a bulwark against the legitimate claims of Palestinian Arabs.

 

So in the end we have a spurious use of questionable legal ideas that are meant not to address the many issues facing Arab Jews in their quest for cultural continuity and social cohesion, but to manipulate the complex issue of how Jews left their homes in the Arab-Muslim world and how that issue is tied to the Palestine refugee problem. 

 

Rather than seeking to redress the massive inequality and cultural exclusion and social humiliation that have been meted out on Arab Jews in both Israel and the Diaspora, we are being told that the most critical element for us is to have the “refugee” issue adjudicated in the context of peace negotiations.

 

For those Sephardim who have no real concern for their cultural well-being, such an issue has indeed become a top priority.  Seeing the Jewish people as one entity – in spite of all that we know has gone on, and continues to go on with regard to the evisceration of the Sephardic heritage – such individuals are firmly ensconced in the Zionist consensus and reject any attempt by other Sephardim to articulate the many valid grievances that have been created by Zionism and Israel.

 

The hostility of Sephardim towards the Arab world and towards Arab culture is often quite pronounced.  It is no great secret that many Sephardic Jews are at the very forefront of Islamophobic rhetoric and see any attempt at redressing Sephardic grievances as illegitimate.  In this way such individuals and organizations can fit in perfectly with the Ashkenazi-controlled Jewish institutional world.

 

But for those of us who are not only concerned with Sephardi continuity, but with justice and fair play, doing the dirty work of Zionism is something that we cannot acquiesce to.  Though it is certainly true that over the course of the past century there have been many problems for Arab Jews that should most definitely be addressed, linking those problems to the Middle East peace process is a false and duplicitous way of going about it.  That Ashkenazim largely ignore the scandals of the Yemenite Babies and the Ringworm Children, but make a big production over what might or might not have happened in Arab countries after 1948 is something that we should ponder more carefully.

 

That Sephardim have no actual influence in the Jewish world today should not force us to accept the priorities of HASBARAH as a means to be included in the discussion.

 

DS 

 

While serving as a Canadian delegate to the annual inter-parliamentary hearing at the United Nations, I came across an exhibit marking the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The central theme of the exhibit is the Nakba – catastrophe – suffered by the Palestinian people, due to the establishment of the State of Israel.

Once again, the United Nations commemorated the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29 – the 64th anniversary of the Partition Resolution – by continuing to ignore the plight of Jewish refugees. Turning history and law on its head, the world body once again failed to note that the Arab countries not only rejected a Palestinian state and went to war to extinguish the nascent Jewish state, but also targeted the Jewish nationals living in their respective countries.

Two refugee populations were created by that decision – the Palestinian refugee population resulting from the Arab war against Israel, and the Jewish refugees resulting from the Arab war against its own Jewish nationals.

Indeed, evidence contained in a report titled “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights And Redress” documents a pattern of state-sanctioned repression and persecution in Arab countries – including Nuremberg-like laws – that targeted its Jewish populations, resulting in denationalization, forced expulsions, illegal sequestration of property, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and murder – namely, anti-Jewish pogroms.

And while the internal Jewish narrative has often referred to pogroms as European attacks on their Jewish nationals, it has often ignored Arab-Muslim attacks on their Jewish nationals.

Moreover, as the report also documents, these massive human rights violations were not only the result of state-sanctioned patterns of oppression in each of the Arab countries, but they were reflective of a collusive blueprint, as embodied in the Draft Law of the Political Committee of the League of Arab States.

This is a story that needs to be heard. It is a truth that must now be acknowledged.

Regrettably, the United Nations also bears express and continuing responsibility for this distorted Middle East and peace narrative. Since 1948, there have been more than 150 UN resolutions that have specifically dealt with the Palestinian refugee plight. Yet not one of these resolutions makes any reference to, nor is there any expression of concern for, the plight of the 850,000 Jews displaced from Arab countries.

Nor have any of the Arab countries involved – or the Palestinian leadership involved – expressed any acknowledgement, let alone regret, for this pain and suffering, or for their respective responsibility for the pain and suffering.

 

How do we rectify this historical – and ongoing – injustice? What are the rights and remedies available under international human rights and humanitarian law? And what are the corresponding duties and obligations incumbent upon the United Nations, Arab countries and members of the international community? 

To answer these questions, I propose a nine-point international human rights action agenda.

• First, it must be appreciated that while justice has long been delayed, it must no longer be denied. The time has come to rectify this historical injustice, and to restore the plight and truth of the “forgotten exodus” of Jews from Arab countries to the Middle East narrative from which they have been expunged and eclipsed these 64 years.

• Second, remedies for victim refugee groups – including rights of remembrance, truth, justice and redress, as mandated under human rights and humanitarian law – must now be invoked for Jews displaced from Arab countries.

• Third, in the manner of duties and responsibilities, each of the Arab countries – and the Arab League, which has played a protective role in Libyan and Syrian aggressions – must acknowledge their role and responsibility in their double aggression of launching an aggressive war against Israel and the perpetration of human rights violations against their respective Jewish nationals. The culture of impunity must end.

• Fourth, the Arab League Peace Plan of 2002 – still held out as a blueprint for an Arab-Israeli peace – should incorporate the question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries as part of its narrative for an Israeli-Arab peace, just as the Israeli narrative now incorporates the issue of Palestinian refugees in its vision of an Israeli-Arab peace.

• Fifth, on the international level, the UN General Assembly – whose theme in the session in which I participated this past week was “political accountability” – and in the interests of justice and equity – should include reference to Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in its annual resolutions; the UN Human Rights Council should address, as it has yet to do, the issue of Jewish as well as Palestinian refugees; UN agencies dealing with compensatory efforts for Palestinian refugees should also address Jewish refugees form Arab countries.

• Sixth, the annual November 29 commemoration by the United Nations of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People should finally be transformed into an International Day of Solidarity for a Two-Peoples Two-State Solution – as the initial 1947 Partition Resolution intended – including solidarity with all refugees created by the Israeli-Arab conflict.

• Seventh, jurisdiction over Palestinian refugees should be transferred from UNRWA to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. There was no justification then – and still less today – for the establishment of a separate body to deal only with Palestinian refugees, particularly when that body is itself compromised by its incitement to hatred, as well as its revisionist teaching of the Middle East peace and justice narrative.

• Eighth, any bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – which one hopes will presage a just and lasting peace – should include Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in an inclusive joinder of discussion.

• Ninth, during any and all discussions on the Middle East by the Quartet and others, any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees should be paralleled by a reference to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The continuing exclusion and denial of rights and redress to Jewish refugees from Arab countries will only prejudice authentic negotiations between the parties and undermine the justice and legitimacy of any agreement.

Let there be no mistake about it. Where there is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there is no truth, there will be no justice; where there is no justice, there will be no reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there will be no peace – which we all seek.

 

From The Jerusalem Post, December 8, 2011

 

 

Arab Jews, Palestinian Refugees and Israel's Folly Politics

By: Yehouda Shenhav

In an article in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz from 22.10.06, the Reuters Agency reported that Word Jewish groups began a global campaign calling for recognition of Jews from Arab countries (i.e. Arab Jews) as refugees in the Middle East conflict. Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) was quoted saying that:

The world sees the plight of Palestinian refugees, and not withstanding their plight, there must be recognition that Jews from Arab countries are also victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), a U.S.-based coalition of Jewish organizations, is one of the groups coordinating the campaign which aims to record testimonies of Jews from Arab countries, list asset losses and lobby foreign governments on their behalf. Reuters also reported that JJAC is working in tandem with Israel's Ministry of Justice, which is collecting and registering testimonials, affidavits and property claims.  The daily internet paper Y-NET (October 24 2006 under the title: "Jews of Arab Countries prepare yourself to claim compensation") also reported that the new minister of justice Meir Shitrit is behind this "new effort."

However this effort is all but novel. It started 6 years ago in a folly attempt to use the Arab Jews and their histories to counter-balance the Palestinian claim for the so called "right of return". The campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Arab Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's Jewish proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets. Whereas in the past, the State of Israel and Jewish organizations have denied any linkage between the two groups and argued that the campaign was launched in the interest of the Arab Jews (see Chapter 3 in my book The Arab Jews, Stanford University Press, 2006), today all parties involved acknowledge that the main objective of the campaign is not to secure the interest of the Arab Jews, but rather to counter-balance the Palestinian political demands. I would like to argue that the idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice; and that any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms

Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July 2000 in an interview with Israel's Channel One, in which he disclosed that an agreement to recognize Jews from Arab lands as refugees materialized at the Camp David summit. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, stepped up and enthusiastically expounded on his "achievement" in an interview with Dan Margalit. It should be noted, that past Israeli governments had refrained from issuing declarations of this sort. There were at least three reasons for that. First, there has been concern that any such proclamation will underscore what Israel has tried to repress and forget: the Palestinians' demand for return. Second, there has been anxiety that such a declaration would encourage property claims submitted by Jews against Arab states and, in response, Palestinian counter-claims to lost property. Third, such declarations would require Israel to update its school textbooks and history, and devise a new narrative by which the Arab Jews journeyed to the country under duress, without being fueled by Zionist aspirations. At Camp David, Ehud Barak decided that the right of return issue was not really on the agenda, so he thought he had the liberty to indulge the analogy between the Palestinian refugees and the Arab Jews, only rhetorically. Characteristically, rather than really dealing with issues as a leader, in a fashion that might lead to mutual reconciliation, Barak and later prime ministers Ariel Sharom and Ehud Oulmert acted like shopkeepers. Furthermore, whereas the article in Ha'aretz mentioned above reports that the Ministry of Justice has already received thousands of claims to date, in actuality the campaign's results thus far are meager. The Jewish organizations involved have not inspired much enthusiasm in Israel, or among Jews overseas. It has yet to extract a single noteworthy declaration from any major Israeli politician. This comes as no surprise: The campaign has a forlorn history whose details are worth revisiting. Sometimes recounting history has a very practical effect.

The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) who initiated this linkage was founded in the 1970s. Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, worried that WOJAC would become a hotbed of what he called "ethnic mobilization." But WOJAC was not formed to assist the Arab Jews; it was invented as a deterrent to block claims harbored by the Palestinian national movement, particularly claims related to compensation and the right of return. At first glance, the use of the term "refugees" for the Arab Jews was not unreasonable. After all, the word had occupied a central place in historical and international legal discourses after World War II. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 from 1967 referred to a just solution to "the problem of refugees in the Middle East." In the 1970s, Arab countries tried to fine-tune the resolution's language so that it would refer to "Arab refugees in the Middle East," but the U.S. government, under the direction of ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg, opposed this revision. A working paper prepared in 1977 by Cyrus Vance, then U.S. secretary of state, ahead of scheduled international meetings in Geneva, alluded to the search for a solution to the "problem of refugees," without specifying the identities of those refugees. Israel lobbied for this formulation. WOJAC, which tried to introduce use of the concept "Jewish refugees," failed.

The Arabs were not the only ones to object to the phrase. Many Zionist Jews from around the world opposed WOJAC's initiative. Organizers of the current campaign would be wise to study the history of WOJAC, an organization which transmogrified over its years of activity from a Zionist to a post-Zionist entity. It is a tale of unexpected results arising from political activity. The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of "Jewish refugees" was Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with Palestinian leaders - and he termed these policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on romantic, borrowed phrases ("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah") in the description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the "fact" that Jewish migration was the result of "Arab expulsion policy." In a bid to complete the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Arab Jewish immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot or transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees.

The organization's claims infuriated many Arab Jews in Israel who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation, 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." 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." The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign. She reported that members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so offended that they threatened to boycott organization meetings should the topic of "Sephardi Jews as refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration precisely predicted the failure of the current organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries to inspire enthusiasm for its efforts.

Also alarmed by WOJAC's stridency, the Foreign Ministry proposed that the organization bring its campaign to a halt on the grounds that the description of Arab Jews as refugees was a double-edged sword. Israel, ministry officials pointed out, had always adopted a stance of ambiguity on the complex issue raised by WOJAC. In 1949, Israel even rejected a British-Iraqi proposal for population exchange - Iraqi Jews for Palestinian refugees - due to concerns that it would subsequently be asked to settle "surplus refugees" within its own borders. The foreign minister deemed WOJAC a Phalangist, zealous group, and asked that it cease operating as a "state within a state." In the end, the ministry closed the tap on the modest flow of funds it had transferred to WOJAC. Then justice minister Yossi Beilin fired Yaakov Meron from the Arab legal affairs department. Today, no serious researcher in Israel or overseas embraces WOJAC's extreme claims.

Moreover, WOJAC, which intended to promote Zionist claims and assist Israel in its conflict with Palestinian nationalism, accomplished the opposite: It presented a confused Zionist position regarding the dispute with the Palestinians, and infuriated many Mizrahi Jews around the world by casting them as victims bereft of positive motivation to immigrate to Israel. WOJAC subordinated the interests of Mizrahi Jews (particularly with regard to Jewish property in Arab lands) to what it erroneously defined as Israeli national interests. The organization failed to grasp that defining Mizrahi Jews as refugees opens a Pandora's box and ultimately harms all parties to the dispute, Jews and Arabs alike.

The State of Israel, the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish rganizations learned nothing from this woeful legacy. Hungry for a magic solution to the refugee question, they have adopted the refugee analogy and are lobbying for it all over the world. It would be interesting to hear the education minister's reaction to the historical narrative presented nowadays by these Jewish organizations. Should Yael Tamir establish a committee of ministry experts to revise school textbooks in accordance with this new post-Zionist genre?

Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Arab Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In contrast, Arab Jews arrived to Israel under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some arrived of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.

The history of this immigration is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have blocked the submission of claims on this basis). The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Arab Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.

Jewish anxieties about discussing the question of 1948 are understandable. But this question will be addressed in the future, and it is clear that any peace agreement will
have to contain a solution to the refugee problem. It's reasonable to assume that as final status agreements between Israelis and Palestinians are reached, an international fund will be formed with the aim of compensating Palestinian refugees for the hardships caused them by the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel will surely be asked to contribute generously to such a fund.

In this connection, the idea of reducing compensation obligations by designating Arab Jews as refugees might become very tempting. But it is wrong to use scarecrows to chase away politically and morally valid claims advanced by Palestinians. The "creative accounting" manipulation concocted by the refugee analogy only adds insult to injury, and widens the psychological gap between Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians might abandon hopes of redeeming a right of return (as, for example, Palestinian pollster Dr. Khalil Shikai claims); but this is not a result to be adduced via creative accounting.

Any peace agreement (which seems now far then ever) must be validated by Israeli recognition of past wrongs and suffering, and the forging of a just solution. The creative accounts proposed by the refugee analogy by the Israeli Ministry of Justice and Jewish organizations turns Israel into a morally and politically spineless bookkeeper.

Yehouda Shenhav is a professor at Tel Aviv University and the editor of Theory Criticism, an Israeli journal in the area of critical theory and cultural studies. He is the author of The Arab Jews, Stanford University Press, 2006.

 

Originally published in SHU 239, December 13, 2006