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Speaking of refugees ... here's an interesting article:
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Bad as the situation became for Jews in Muslim countries with the approach and explosion of World War II, the 1948 war in Palestine (the Israeli War of Independence) made things infinitely worse. The surrounding Arab states declared war - en masse - against the tiny strip of land that proclaimed itself the new State of Israel in 1948.[46a] Hostility towards the Jews of the Mizrachim Diaspora got much worse as a result.
The Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Saudi armies and Iraqi and Palestinian irregulars did not invade Israel because it had attacked or threatened those countries, but because Israel had chosen to *exist*. By doing so it had cancelled the dhimma on a grand scale.[46b]
When the dhimma is cancelled, jihad resumes. Thus in 1947 the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini issued a fatwa: "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!"[47]
Arab leaders were just as violent in addressing the non-Arab world. Unlike today, they did not claim they were the victims. They made no effort to win over world opinion because they expected to wipe out the Jews quickly. In their public statements they boasted of the mayhem that was to come: Thus, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, promised: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."[48]
They made no effort to convince the world they were responding to a Jewish attack. In addressing the UN Security Council in April 1948, Jamal Husseini, Spokesperson for the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee, said: "The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight."[49]
When the the Jews announced the formation of a state of Israel, the Arab armies and paramilitaries attacked Jewish *communities* - that is, they attacked *civilians*. Since they made no pretense that they were acting in self-defense, their attack was illegal under international law; it's only rationale was that the attackers hated Jews and refused to accept the existence of a Jewish state. Launching a war because one dislikes the other side and wants to destroy it is the very definition of a war of aggression. And in international law, launching a war of aggression is itself a war crime, for it makes possible all other war crimes.
The return to a state of jihad made the situation of Jews living in Arab countries extremely dangerous even if they had nothing to do with the Zionist movement, which was European in origin.
As sociologist Shlomo Swirski writes in “Israel: The Oriental Majority”:[50]
[Start Swirski Quote]
“…the military confrontation between the Jews in Palestine and the Palestinian Arabs and the armies of the Arab states in 1947-49 created an impossible climate for the Jews living throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Within a short period of time, they evacuated en masse to the new state of Israel. Whole communities were transplanted - most of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq, the 45,000 Jews of Yemen, and the 35,000 of Libya - as well as substantial parts of other communities, from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in the west to Iran in the east. From 1948 to 1956, a total of some 450,000 Jews arrived in Israel from Asia and Africa, compared to 360,000 Jews from Europe and America.”
[End Swirski Quote]
So the Oriental Jews didn’t simply migrate to Israel; they *fled* the countries where their ancestors had lived for a hundred generations or more.[51] They lost virtually everything they owned.
The numbers cited above are staggering. As hundreds of thousands of Oriental Jews fled, countries which once had large Jewish communities became virtually Judenfrei. And according to a Library of Congress study, “By the early 1970s, the number of Israelis of African-Asian origin outnumbered European or American Jews.”[52]
In 1985, the Oriental Jews were “the majority of the Israeli Jewish population - 43.3% - of first and second-generation Israelis…[including non-Jews]”[53] In fact, “until the recent Russian immigration, the majority in Israel was the 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and their millions of children… Mizrachim are still today 50% of the Jewish population.”[54]
Thus, the general perception that Arabs are the only refugees produced by the Arab-Jewish conflicts since 1947 is simply wrong. The difference is that Jewish refugees who fled to Israel - and who had everything taken from them in the process - became Israeli citizens (or citizens of other countries). By way of contrast, Palestinian refugees were refused citizenship by every Arab state except Jordan.
And this means that…
**The Arab States, Not Israel, Are Responsible For The Palestinian Refugee Problem**
Why didn't the Arab states let these Palestinians be citizens? To what end?
Answer: to keep the refugees as a festering political sore that could - and still can - be used against the State of Israel. Whether the policy towards these refugees is cruel or benign, the attitude is the same: they are denied citizenship so they can be maintained as a political issue, to put Israel on the defensive.
Consider the examples of Lebanon and Syria. The following quotes are from the Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, which is strongly biased in favor of Arab leaders’ view of the Palestinian conflict. That bias makes their words especially credible on this point:[55]
[Start Quote From Washington Report]
“Many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon still live in squalid camps…After more than half a century in exile, their situation remains precarious. Without citizenship, or even the same options as guestworkers from Egypt or Sri Lanka, the Palestinians cannot work in many occupations. Nor do they receive assistance from the cash-strapped Lebanese government. In some cases, residents are unable even to repair damaged houses because they cannot ‘import’ building materials into the camps.
Because Beirut refuses to accept the de facto resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the refugees have never been granted citizenship or residency rights by the Lebanese government, which wants to keep the pressure on Israel to permit the refugees’ return. This policy, however, has caused hardship for many Palestinians.”
[End Quote From Washington Report]
So Lebanon plays politics with the unfortunate lives of these Palestinians. According to Washington Report, the Syrian government’s policy is more benign, but it has the same political objective:
[Back To Washington Report]
“Circumstances for Palestinians just across the border in Syria are remarkably different. According to Angela Williams, director of UNRWA in Syria, the key reason is the Syrian government's official policy of hospitality toward the refugees. "They are not faced with the kind of restrictions they have in Lebanon," Williams explained. "Palestinians have the same access as Syrians to government services, education, government hospitals and employment. Here they can even purchase one parcel of domestic property for their own use."
The extension of rights to Palestinian refugees in Syria stems from the government's philosophy that, rather than standing in the way of political aspirations, improved living conditions help to build up Palestinians’ ability to achieve a final settlement and return home when they are able. Although *they don’t have citizenship, cannot vote and cannot purchase farmland,* [my emphasis] Palestinians are fully integrated into Syrian society.”
[End Quote From Washington Report]
How can one be “fully integrated” into a society in which one cannot vote, be a citizen, or, if one is a farmer, start a farm? The answer is that one cannot, and that makes sense, because the Syrians want the Palestinians to “achieve a final settlement and return home.” Syria’s somewhat more benign policy follows their philosophy that a healthy and well-educated (but all the same politically-in-limbo and second-class) Palestinian is a sharper geopolitical weapon.
We may contrast these attitudes with those of the Israeli government. Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence includes the following: “WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”[56]
UN Resolution 194, which was acceptable to the Israelis, stated in point 11 that, “…refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property…” This resolution was *unanimously rejected* by the Arabs.[57]
The perception, common in some circles, that the Israelis are to blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis will therefore not withstand historical scrutiny. I summarize the relevant facts:
1) The post-World War II military confrontations between Jews and Arabs began when the 1947 UN partition plan “was immediately opposed by the [Palestinian] Arabs who...attacked Jews throughout Palestine as the British withdrew.”[58]
2) The surrounding Arab states followed through with an unprovoked and simultaneous declaration of war on Israel in 1948.
3) The anti-Semitism of the Arab states, heightened by the war against Israel, is what made the living conditions of the Mizrachim Diaspora so dangerous that they fled en masse to Israel. Thus, the Arab states *caused* a Jewish refugee crisis that the Israeli state then proceeded to absorb.
4) The Arabs lost the 1948 war with Israel. The resulting Palestinian refugees were not given citizenship by the Arab countries that had created the refugee crisis by attacking Israel. (The exception is Jordan).
The above list speaks for itself. One has to argue against it in order to lay the blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis on the Israelis.
[46a] To get an idea just how tiny, we have posted two maps. One compares Israel to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The other map shows that including Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is almost as big as Vancouver Island.
Compared to the Arab world:
http://www.iris.org.il/sizemaps/arabwrld.htm
Compared to Vancouver Island:
http://www.iris.org.il/sizemaps/vancouv.htm
[46b] "The Zionist militias gained the upper hand over the Palestinians through skill and pluck, aided considerably by intra-Arab rivalries. Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948, was quickly recognized by the United States , the Soviet Union , and many other governments, fulfilling the Zionist dream of an internationally approved Jewish state. Neither the UN nor the world leaders, however, could spare Israel from immediate invasion by the armies of five Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan (now Jordan)—and within a few days, the state's survival appeared to be at stake."
"Israel." Encyclopædia Britannica 2003 Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 Jan, 2003
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=109507
[47] Leonard J. Davis and M. Decter (eds.). Myths and facts 1982; a Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Washington DC: near east report, 1982), p. 199
[48] Howard M Sachar, A History of Israel (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 333
[49] Security Council Official Records, S/Agenda/58, (April 16, 1948), p. 19
[50] Swirski, Shlomo. 1989. Israel: The Oriental Majority. London & New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd. (pp. 3-4)
[51] For a more personal account of the plight of the Mizrahim, go to http://www.loolwa.com/crisis.html
[52] “ISRAEL A Country Study,” Federal Research Division Library of Congress. Edited by Helen Chapin Metz. Research Completed December 1988
http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/iltoc.html
Consult the chapter titled “POPULATION.”
[53] Swirski, Shlomo. 1989. Israel: The Oriental Majority. London & New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd. (p.3)
[54] A MIZRAHI PERSPECTIVE ON THE CURRENT MIDDLE EAST CRISIS, by Loolwa Khazoom;
http://www.loolwa.com/crisis.html
[55] Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon and Syria Face Different, Uncertain Futures. Dec 2000, Vol. 19 Issue 9, p26; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; by Fecci, JoMarie
[56] Text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence:
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Hi...c_of_Indep.html
[57] “The Palestinian Refugees”, by Mitchell Bard
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/refugees.html
[58] “on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to divide British-ruled Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. This decision was immediately opposed by the Arabs who, under the ostensible leadership of Hajj AmYn al-SusaynY , the grand mufti of Jerusalem, attacked Jews throughout Palestine as the British withdrew.”
“Israel” Encyclopædia Britannica
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=109507
[Accessed September 23, 2002].
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