The definition of ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Arab countries

The definition of ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Arab countries

The definition of ethnic cleansing is "a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory." By this definition, only one type of ethnic cleansing has occurred in the Arab-Israeli conflict - that of the Jews of The Middle East, Asia and North Africa. Whereas before 1948 there were over one million Jewish families living in Arab lands, by 2001 only 6,100 remained. The property of the expelled Jewish families from Arab countries was confiscated; which included; personal assets, businesses, homes and over 120,000 sq. km of Jewish owned land and is valued in the trillions of dollars.

THOSE WHO falsely claim Israel carried out ethnic cleansing of Arabs can point to no official command to that effect. Jewish ethnic cleansing from Arab lands, on the other hand, was official state policy enforced by terror and violence.

Jews were formally expelled from all the areas in the Arab world. The Arab League released a statement urging Arab governments to facilitate the exit of Jews from Arab countries, a resolution which was carried out through a series of punitive measures and discriminatory decrees that made it untenable for Jews to remain in their native lands of over 2,600 years.

On May 16, 1948, The New York Times recorded a series of measures taken by the Arab League to marginalize and persecute the Jewish residents of Arab League member states. It reported on the "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."

IN 1951, the Iraqi government passed legislation that made affiliation with Zionism a felony and ordered "the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism." This pushed tens of thousands of Jews to leave Iraq, while all of their property was confiscated by the state and many Jews were killed and women raped.

Algeria has no Jews whatsoever. In 1870, the French government granted the Jews French citizenship, under the décrets Crémieux of 1870. (For this reason, they are sometimes lumped together with the pieds-noirs.) This decision was due largely to pressures from prominent members of the French Jewish community. Within a generation, most Algerian Jews had come to speak French rather than Arabic or Ladino, and embraced many aspects of French culture.

When Algeria attained independence in 1962, legislation granted Algerian citizenship only to those residents whose father or paternal grandfather were Muslims. Moreover, the Supreme Court of Justice of Algeria declared that the Jews were no longer under the protection of the law. The great majority of Algeria's 170,000 Jews were forced to leave the country for France together with the pied-noirs.

In 1967, many Egyptian Jews were detained, tortured, imprisoned, killed and Jewish homes confiscated. In Libya that year, the government "urged the Jews to leave the country," while permitting each to take one suitcase and the equivalent of $50.

In 1970, the Libyan government issued new laws confiscating all the assets of Libya's Jews. No compensation was paid. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi justified this on the grounds that "the alignment of the Jews with Israel, the Arab nations' enemy, has forfeited their right to compensation."

According to tradition, Syria's Jewish community had its origin during the reign of King David. At that time, David's general, Yoav, controlled the region of Aram-Zobah when he defeated both the Arameans and the Ammonites (2 Sam. 10).

While rabbinic tradition identifies this area as Aleppo, the largest city in modern Syria, the settlement likely existed in the southern part of the country. By the time the Romans established their kingdom in the region, both Aleppo and Damascus had sizable Jewish communities.

Although Syria still had over 35,000 Jewish residents in 1948, when Israel declared its independence, today only about twenty elderly Jewish people remain in Damascus. The severe persecution and terror forced the entire Jewish population out of the country and many were relocated to Israel.

Despite being forced from their homeland, the worldwide Syrian Jewish population has reached 200,000.

These are just a few examples of what would became common measures throughout the Arab world - not to mention the pogroms and attacks on Jews and their institutions that drove a major part of the forced Jewish exodus.

THE ECONOMIC suffering on the part of the two refugee populations was equally lopsided.

According to the newly released study "The Palestinian Refugee Issue: Rhetoric vs. Reality" by former CIA and State Department Treasury official Sidney Zabludoff in the Jewish Political Studies Review, the value of assets lost by both refugee populations is strikingly uneven.

Zabludoff uses data from John Measham Berncastle, who in the early 1950's, under the aegis of the newly formed United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), undertook the task of calculating the assets of the Palestinian refugees. Zabludoff calculates that their assets were worth $3.9 billion in today's currency.

The over a million Jewish refugees, being greater in number and more urban, had assets worth in the trillions of dollars in today’s currency.

On top of this equation, it must be taken into account that Israel returned over 90 percent of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Arab/Palestinian refugees during the 1950s. This considerably diminishes the UNCCP calculations.

THESE FACTS are intentionally conveniently forgotten and not publicized, leaving the way open for Israel-bashers like Exeter University history Prof. Ilan Pappe to omit any mention of the Middle East's greatest ethnic cleansing of the Jews. The Arab/Muslim ethnic cleansing continues until today with millions of Christians and other religions forced to leave the Arab/Muslim countries.

However, a few recent events are clearing the world community's perception of this history. On April 1, the US Congress adopted Resolution 185, which for the first time recognizes Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It urges that the president and US officials participating in Middle East discussions ensure that any reference to Arab/Palestinian refugees "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."

Just as importantly, the first-ever hearing in the British parliament on the subject of Jewish refugees from Arab countries took place in the House of Lords. It was convened by Labor MP John Mann and Lord Anderson of Swansea, a joint briefing organized by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) in association with the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Greater recognition of the refugee issue and the ethnic cleansing of over a million Jewish families who’s majority now lives in Israel, formerly expelled from the wider Arab world will bring clearer definition of the area's history to a greater number of people.

A people like the Arabs in Greater Israel cannot be said to have been "ethnically cleansed" from an area in which it has grown at double the rate of its geographic neighbors. On the other hand, a people, like the Jews that lost more than 190 times its number from an area over the course of a few decades makes a very strong case for Jews having undergone ethnic cleansing by the Arab countries.

There are no Jews permitted to live in Jordan and there are no Jews permitted to live in Arab/Palestinian controlled territory in the West Bank or Gaza.