The Unbearable Silence about the Jewish Refugees

by Michael Curtis
December 14, 2012 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3498/jewish-refugees

The status of those Jews as refugees has been found to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR announced on two occasions, in February 1957 and in July 1967, that Jews who fled from Arab countries "may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office," thus regarding them, according to international law, as bona fide refugees.

The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, emphasizing the pitiful condition of Palestinian refugees, and portraying them as the world's major refugee problem, has convinced many in the international community to accept this version of their unfortunate plight and the injustices done to them.

That narrative, however, essentially one of historical revisionism, denies the truth that the Jews who left, fled, or were expelled from Arab countries can really be regarded as refugees, as well.

The story of these Jewish refugees has been much less well known than that of the Palestinian refugees, about whose fate international resolutions have been passed, and on whose behalf thirteen UN agencies and organizations have provided aid. The issue of the legitimate rights of the Jewish refugees, and the individual and collective loss of their assets, have not yet been seriously addressed; nor have there been any real attempts in international forums at the restitution of their rights and assets.

The contrast is startling. Between 1949 and 2009 there were 163 resolutions passed in the UN General Assembly dealing with Palestinian refugees; there was not one on Jewish refugees. Similarly, since 1968, the UN Human Rights Council (formerly Commission) has adopted 132 resolutions dealing with the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but not one directed to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Other specialized agencies of the UN have been specifically established, or charged, to pay attention to the Palestinian refugees. These refugees have benefited from international financial assistance; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), since 1950, has provided over $13 billion (in 2007 prices). Jewish refugees have received nothing from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international organization dealing with refugees all over the world except Palestinians, who have the UNRWA solely devoted to them.

The status of those Jews as refugees, although challenged, has been found to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which established the definition of "refugee," and which was adopted in July 1951, and entered into force in April 1954.

Jews had been living in what are today Arab countries for over more than 2,500 years, going back to the Babylonian captivity. In 1948, they still accounted for 3.6 per cent of the population in Libya, 2.8 per cent in Morocco, and 2.6 per cent in Iraq. Their social ranking varied in the different countries. In Iraq and Egypt some Jews were successful in occupations and professions, and played some role in their societies; in Yemen and Morocco they were generally uneducated and poor.

In general, Jews in Arab countries living under Islamic rule, were treated as dhimmis, barely tolerated second class citizens, often obliged to pay a tithe, or tax, called a jizya, to remain in the country. In some places, they were allowed limited religious, educational, and business, opportunities, but in other places, they were denied civil and human rights; suffered legal discrimination; had property taken, and were deprived of citizenship.

In the 20^th century, both before and after the creation of Israel, in a number of Arab countries Jews were threatened -- physically, economically, and socially. Jews there experienced riots, mass arrests, confiscation of property, economic boycotts, and limits on employment in many occupations. They also endured limits on admission to colleges, and on personal movement, as well as pogroms which occurred in Libya, Syria, Morocco, and especially Iraq, where in the space of two days in June 1941, in Baghdad, a pogrom, known as the Farhud, took place: under the pro-Nazi regime of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, 179 Jews were murdered and 600 injured by rioters.

In Libya, in 1945, rioters in Tripoli killed more than 140 Jews. A number of other Arab countries saw Jews murdered, kidnapped, and in general encounter discrimination, expulsion, and exclusion from citizenship.

The Arab League countries decided to take away the citizenship of their Jews. Iraq deprived its Jews of their citizenship in 1950, and of their property in 1951. Egypt and Libya issued laws that "Zionists" were not nationals. They disregarded Jews having lived in those countries for more than a thousand years before the birth of Muhammad in 570, and the emergence of Islam in the 7^th century.

With the creation of Israel in 1948, Jews in Arab and Islamic Middle East countries experienced spoliation, organized discrimination, violence, attacks and pogroms.

Libya in 1961 deprived the less than 10% of the Jews who had remained there of their citizenship, as did Algeria in 1962. Iraq seized the property of Jews. As a result, Jews began leaving, were driven out, or were brought out. By the mid 1970s almost all Jews -- more than 850,000 -- had left those countries. According to figures and analysis provided by "Justice for Jews from Arab Countries," and by Stanley Urman, its executive vice president, the largest numbers came from Morocco (265,000); Algeria (140,000); Iraq (135,000), and Tunisia (105,000). Almost all of the 55,000 Jews living in Yemen were taken to Israel by the air operation, "Magic Carpet." About 130,000 Jews were airlifted from Iraq to Israel.

Today, fewer than 4,500 Jews remain in Arab countries. Israel absorbed and integrated 600,000 of the more than 850,000 who left.

It is high time to end the virtual silence and unwillingness to consider the question of Jewish refugees, and to recognize that they should be part of any final resolution of the Middle East refugee problem. The crucial United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22 1967 mentioned that a comprehensive peace settlement should include "a just settlement of the refugee problem." It was Arthur Goldberg, the U.S. representative to the UN largely responsible for drafting the Resolution, who clarified that the language referred "both to Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars." The implication was that any arrangements made would apply to all -- not only Arab -- refugees in the Middle East.

This point of view is reflected in both bilateral and multilateral agreements. The Camp David Framework for Peace in the Middle East of 1978, Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979, the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994, the Madrid Conference of 1991-92, and the Israel-Palestinian Agreements beginning in 1993, including the Declaration of Principles of September 1993 and the Interim Agreement of September 1995, all articulated similar language.

Similarly, the UNHCR announced on two occasions, in February 1957 and in July 1967, that Jews who had fled from Arab countries "may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office," thus regarding them, according to international law, as bona fide refugees.

In any settlement, the property abandoned by Jews would need to be taken into account. Calculation of this, although not easy, has been assessed as some $300 billion; and Jewish-owned real estate -- about four times the size of Israel -- at about $6 billion.

The international community is long overdue, in dealing with the Palestinian refugees, to see that equity prevails. It should be conscious of the rights of Jewish refugees, who, as a result of Arab and Islamic behavior, have suffered by being deprived of rights and property. The international community should also call for redress for these descendants. Some form of compensation is due the Jewish refugees; and discussion of it should be part of final status talks in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Michael Curtis is author of Should Israel Exist? A Sovereign Nation under Attack by the International Community.

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Comment on this item

15 Reader Comments

Yuval Brandstetter MD • Dec 18, 2012 at 15:13

This article is the prima facie proof of the anti-Semitism inherent to all international consortia dealing with the Muslim-Jewish confrontation. Close to a million Jewish refugees - dust to dust. Six hundred and fifty Arab refugees, the minority of whom actually left the land of Israel - victims to be cherished.

Well, if those international consortia love those Muslims so much then, by all means adopt them. Israel is willing to make another exchange: three million Muslims now occupying Israel for three million Jews presently scattered throughout the world.

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Elliott A. Green • Dec 16, 2012 at 16:34

In this very welcome article, Prof. Curtis points out that the Jewish refugees from Arab lands have been unjustly overlooked for many years. He also briefly describes the traditional dhimmi stratus of Jews in Arab and other Muslim lands, while only hinting at Arab collaboration in the Holocaust. While the Jewish refugees from Arab lands have been getting attention lately, the dhimmi is still largely unknown, even to people ordinarily well-informed. Likewise, Arab Holocaust collaboration, especially in the person of the Palestinian Arab mufti, Amin el-Husseini, is widely unknown nowadays, although it was notorious during the war and in the post-war period. (See my article on this in Midstream, September-October 1994.) I think that both the dhimmi and the Arab Holocaust collaboration should be made familiar to everyone concerned about the Middle East.

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Bernard Katz, M.A., B.L.S.

Elliott A. Green • Dec 19, 2012 at 23:42

The link between the Muifti of Jerusalem and the Nazis is well known. The tragic casting out of the ancient Jewish communities of so many Arab countries is also well known to all but those least informed. Many of those Jews had achieved very high levels in their societies - e.g. lawyers and bankers in Iraq. Of course, had Israel not come back into a nation, there likely would not have been an expulsion of those communities. But much less well known is the link between the pre-WWII Nazi government of Germany and the Jewish Agency in mandate Palestine. A few Nazis even visited Palestine (including, I believe, Eichman!). This had to do with the "Ha'avarah" or Transfer Agreement signed on August 25, 1933, which brought many German Jews to Palestine while severely weakening the worldwide boycott of German products. Lehi, the Jewish extremist group, wanted to continue the contacts even after WWII began! Once you start peeling an onion, there are many layers waiting to make you cry...

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M. Sphardi, PhD • Dec 16, 2012 at 15:14

Israel's current ambassador to the UN on April 24th of this year made much the same statement in brief to the assembled UN body. There is a vast body of documentation on the above issue, but if Israel fails to use the upcoming negotiations regarding Palestinian refugees as the opportunity to resolve the above matter, I cannot imagine any possible future opportunity. It's now or never!

Perhaps Israel's reluctance comes from an unwillingness for its refugees, wherever they may be from, to call themselves refugees. They are proud, upwardly mobile citizens of Israel. On the other hand, the Palestinians have been convinced by the Arab League that it is strategically in the League's best interest for Palestinian generations to humiliate themselves for whatever time it may take to rid the Arab nation of its Jews...

Jew Edward Bernays learned from his uncle Sigmund Freud how to sway public opinion, and Goebbels read Bernays' books to great effect. It may be the last minute for Israel to read Bernays carefully now and develop a public relations campaign to accomplish what more literature such as the above has failed to do. My own mother and her family were victims of a Russian pogrom and fled to Palestine. Never in her long life did she ever intimate that she was or had been a refugee. She had too much pride. But now may be the time for Israel to put that kind of pride aside. It's now or never...

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M.Sphardi, PhD.

M. Sphardi, PhD • Dec 17, 2012 at 13:16

Modern public relations owes much to the teachings of Freud, who knowingly addressed the issue. Goebbels used those teachings with great success. Now for the last sixty some years, the Arab League has sold the Palestinian refugee tragedy with remarkable success as well. Half of Israelis have had an equal or even greater claim against the misfortunes of expulsion from the eleven Moslem countries of 1947-67 and the expropriation of their lands and other assets. But these Jews have avoided considering themselves to be refugees all these years.

Although various UN agencies have clearly designated them as refugees entitled to compensation, they have too much pride, one must assume, to see themselves as refugees. The Palestinian Arabs have paid a very heavy price in loss of personal dignity all to make a political point, but their leaders are apparently winning the propaganda war with unbelievable cunning... Unless both refugee issues are addressed concurrently now, it is difficult to imagine how we can win that battle later. I noted this evening that the US Presbyterian church leadership has been in large measure co-opted by the Arab League, which has been instituting boycotts against Israeli products in the name of the Presbyterians...

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David, Thailand • Dec 15, 2012 at 22:27

While there is nothing new about Jews being periodically purged from their native and host lands, or left homeless, destitute and often slaughtered by defenders of freedom and justice, these disruptions traditionally strengthen their resolve to regroup and advance socially, spiritually, politically, and to the chagrin of the world, economically. Unfortunately, the world has moved so far and fast to the Left that new and adverse precedents are being created virtually by the week, and though wiser Jews may be preparing for the next upheaval in order to survive as a race, it is a safe bet that Israel will not celebrate her centenary as a Jewish state.

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Ivan Gur-Arie • Dec 15, 2012 at 15:32

There is a saying "The squeeky wheel get the oil." The Arabs have played various roles, including the squeeky wheel, which has enthralled the media. Israelis seem to deal with a problem silently and, therefore, gets no lubrication. I noted at the CNN coverage of the recent turmoil with Gaza and Hamas. I in particular note the reporting of the reporter Arwa Damon, who seems to relish the reporting of the Arab without any balance of concern for the Israeli mothers and fathers. I mention this because I feel that the press is complicit in the propoganda service of the Arab community. That is perhaps a very good reason that the Jewish refugee issue is and remains unaddressed.

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Caterina Farkash • Dec 15, 2012 at 09:21

Thank you for this very interesting article.

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M. Sphardi, PhD • Dec 15, 2012 at 07:42

I have had the opportunity to know here in Israel scores of immigrants from the Arab countries since my first arrival in Israel in 1952, and to this date have found it remarkable that none of them ever spoke of themselves as refugees. I knew them intimately as my college students, friends, gardeners, and domestic helpers - but never as refugees. Even a 35 year old student in 1959 just released from a Russian gulag looked 65 but never spoke of himself as a refugee.

This has always puzzled me because all these people were refugees by any definition and certainly no less than the Palestinian Arabs have insisted for themselves or the UN has designated both these Jews and Arabs. Considering the unfortunate plight of the UNRWA refugees, who not only persist in calling themselves refugees but so do their children and their children's children as does UNRWA, it seems that there is an important difference emotionally and psychologically between the Palestinians and the Israeli refugees.

It may go a long way to explain the amazingly different adjustments that both groups have made: one group has put the past behind itself and moved on with their lives; the other has insisted on not only reliving the past, but wallowing in it, mythologizing it until it has afflicted the entire world for several generations. Goebbels said it, "Repeat a lie often enough and everyone will believe it to be true." Or words to that effect.... Perhaps the major problem is that the Arabs and much of the world have come to believe the mythology hook, line, and sinker... Both groups suffered terrible injustices that must be negotiated. My own mother was a refugee from a pogrom in Ukraine and whose family fled to Palestine. She never, ever mentioned it until I read The Fixer and learned that it was really about her uncle, Mendel Beilis, falsely accused of a blood libel in Ukraine....

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Curious Dave • Dec 14, 2012 at 12:14

The "We, too" argument uses a false comparison as justification for mistreatment of Palestinian refugees. Jews who fled their home countries at least had somewhere to go, the new state of Israel, with UN-defined boundaries. Palestinians had nowhere to go but refugee camps. In any case, the "We, too" argument ignores the thrust of the real Palestinian argument: their lands were stolen from them and settled by Jews. That is what really needs to be resolved. The "We, too" case is a red herring in that respect.

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M.Sphardi, PhD

Curious Dave • Dec 17, 2012 at 14:40

Curious Dave has observed that the Jewish refugees from Arab lands had a refuge awaiting them in Israel whereas the Palestinians had none. That observation ignores some important facts: The Jewish refugees had lived in the Arab world for up to 2,600 years and were in most cases well-integrated into the cultures of Iran, Iraq, Morocco, etc. and were not generally Hebrew speakers. Their appearance in Israel as refugees at a time of great deprival and shortages was not greeted with great enthusiasm.

The Palestinians, on the other hand were largely newcomers from nearby Syria and Egypt, shared precisely the same culture, religious practices, and dialect and arrived at first to get jobs and services from the early Zionists, and after 1917 seeking itinerant employment from the British Mandatory government building military camps and infrastructure.The fact that so many Arabs fled in 1948 suggests that they were rootless in most cases. Those with roots tended to remain and trust their Jewish neighbors....

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L. H. Roswe

Curious Dave • Dec 17, 2012 at 21:30

Curious Dave's comments are not valid. The Palestinans have twelve Arab countries to go to and some did go to them. They are still in refugee camps for political and other reasons, such as these countries no wanting them. After WWII there were five million refugees that by 1951 had all been resettled in various countries.

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Bernard Katz, M.A., B.L.S.

L. H. Roswe • Dec 19, 2012 at 23:55

L.H. Rowse's remarks show his/her ignorance of Palestinains nationalism, which dates back to the early 1900s - if not earlier. Yes, the Palestinians are Arabs, but nationally they are Palestinians. French Canadians do not consider France, or Belgium, or the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland as being equivalent to their homeland in French Canada.

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Bernard Katz, M.A., B.L.S.

M.Sphardi, PhD • Dec 20, 2012 at 00:27

Quite right about the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, who often even thought of themselves as Jewish Arabs! They achieved much distinction in many Arab countries. I have relatives by marriage who were forced out of Iraq and fled to Israel in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In Iraq they had been lawyers and bankers for centuries. When they came to Israel they were treated abominably - and I don't mean just the living conditions they were forced to endure. They faced dreadful discrimination and, yes, racism from many of their fellow Jews and from the sakhnut. How long did it take for one of the major political parties to have a Sephardic Jew in their top echelons? David Levy (born in Morocco 1937, made aliya 1957) from the working class became a leader in the Mizrakhi youth movement and in 1977 was made a cabinet minister by Begin. Your characterization of the Palestinian refugees from 1947-49, however is way off the rails. While it is true that there had been an influx of Arabs into Palestine both pre and post mandate, the claim put forward initially by Joan Peters, I believe (in her book, From Time Immemorial, 1984), has been thoroughly debunked by by many scholars, such as Yehoshua Porath, expert in Palestinian nationalism at Hebrew U. The large bulk of Palestinian refugees (Benny Morris uses 700 or 750,000) were certainly "rooted" there. Palestine was their home and homeland. They were displaced by a civil and then an intensive war (of independence vs. the naqba). Why wouldn't they expect to return following their displacement (Morris gives several non-exclusive causes) after the fighting stopped?

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Phillip Slepian • Dec 14, 2012 at 09:14

Curtis makes an excellent point, and I would personally hope that the property confiscated from the Jewish refugees would force those seeking the "right of return" for Arab refugees to pause and reconsider.

But there is little mystery as to why the treatment of these two groups of refugees is so different. The Jewish state fully integrated and assimiliated (some would argue, too well) the Jewish refugees from Arab lands into Israeli society, granted them citizenship, and encouraging them to settle throughout Israel. In contrast, the Arabs have put forth a great effort to isolate and perpetuate its Arab refugees (most of whom are only refugees by choice - Israel did not expel them, but they left at the behest of Arab leaders who wanted them out of the way of their own invading armies), and keep them as political tools in their political war against the Jewish state. The reason why they have their own UN commission (UNWRA) to deal with them and not UNHCR, is that the mission of UNHCR is to promote the integration of refugees into their new host lands, not to perpetuate, from generation to generation, the refugee status in the hopes of some day forcing the original country to take them back. That is exactly the mission of UNWRA, though, complete with education programs designed to foment hatred of Israel and the Jews, all on the UN's dime. Also, under UNHCR, only refugees and their children are entitled to the status of refugee. UNWRA makes it possible for infinite generations to retain that status. Clearly, the UN has been fully enlisted in the Arab political war against Israel. Until UNWRA is disolved, and the Arab refugees are integrated into the Arab nations of the Middle East, there can be no resolution to the Israel-Arab conflict.

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