Don’t Forget the Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands
One cannot grasp the complicated reality of the Middle East by ignoring half the suffering.
I would like to share my own unique perspective on the refugee issue, one that is rarely heard by our media.
I am Jewish, but I am also Middle Eastern. I come from a traditional Sephardic/Mizrahi household. The food we eat, the way we pray, the music we listen to are all Middle Eastern in their style and origins. While I am very familiar with the situation of Middle Eastern Jewish refugees, it has always astounded, and even offended, me that the situation of my relatives who suffered and endured in refugee camps is rarely addressed.
Up to one million Jews lived in the Middle East and North Africa in 1945. These Middle Eastern Jews lived in communities dating back more than three millennia. Yet today these communities have been virtually wiped out by Islamic governments and only a few thousand Jews remain.
Israel was a very poor country with a finite amount of resources, making life very difficult for diverse Jews who were breaking free of repressive regimes. While Israel absorbed the survivors of the Holocaust, it also absorbed an equal number of Jews from the Middle East who faced intense persecution under Islamic regimes that became very Nazi-like in their treatment of Jews.
My paternal grandfather vividly recalls his experiences living as a Jew in Baghdad and the Farhud pogrom, which was a Nazi pogrom coordinated by Haj Amin al-Husseini. In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq. Nearly 300 Jews were killed and more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, and hundreds of Jewish-owned shops were robbed and destroyed. My older family members recall witnessing how Iraqi soldiers pulled small children away from their parents and ripped the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets; pregnant women were raped and their stomachs cut open. My grandfather hid his baby brother underneath his t-shirt when the violence began and ran home. My great-grandfather saved his entire family during the riots that broke out in Baghdad by claiming to be a Muslim when Iraqi troops came into their home with the intent of looting, raping, and killing. Eventually, when being a Jew was practically criminalized, my father’s family escaped to Israel with only the clothes on their backs — their belongings were confiscated — leaving behind everything that they knew. Their experience was not a unique one and was shared by several thousand Baghdadi Jews.
Other Islamic countries treated their Jewish populations similarly. My maternal grandmother escaped from Syria during the mid-1940s. Her parents had died and she was forced to live with an older sister. As a 16-year-old girl, she decided to pay a Druze man with the gold her mother left to her and made the long, tedious journey to modern-day Israel. Because Syrian officials would incarcerate any Jew fleeing in the direction of Israel, my grandmother and other individuals making their way from Syria to what eventually became Israel would only be able to walk at night. Several Syrian Jews found it nearly impossible to flee. The last few Jews from Syria made their escape in the early 1990s. Our male relatives who arrived in Israel in the 1990s shared their stories with us. They were taken by Syrian authorities and tortured for unspecified amounts of time, experiencing unspeakable cruelty at the hands of Syrian officials.
We rarely hear of the atrocities committed against Middle Eastern Jewry and only hear about the poor Palestinian refugees. Indeed the Palestinian refugees are a poor people, a scapegoat for repressive Islamic governments who despise Israel and who will not allow these people to become immersed in Islamic countries.
My family is also indigenous to the Middle East. They are from communities that lived in dusty tents for years. They helped to build a country that was poor and barely habitable. They were refugees with a plight that has been unrecognized for decades.
Rather than engaging in violence like the Palestinians, Middle Eastern Jews persevered and built new lives. They became Israeli citizens and they ceased being refugees. At first they had to overcome social discrimination, as two very different Jewish populations found themselves interacting so suddenly — European and Middle Eastern. However, it is crucial to note that Israel eventually absorbed populations from Europe and the Middle East without receiving assistance from the international community. The Middle Eastern Jewish community makes up more than half of Israel’s Jewish population.
I believe that without honesty or a comprehensive view of the Middle East, individuals are simply deluding themselves into thinking they actually have a firm understanding of a very complicated conflict. I have never heard a single Middle Eastern department at any university bring up this issue. Instead, much of the dialogue surrounding the Middle East attacks Israel, which makes up less than one percent of the Middle East. We cannot omit important narratives simply because they would call to question what we already believe.
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Reut Cohen graduated from UCI, where she ran a blog to document the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American incidents on campus.
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23 Comments
1. Marc Malone:It has been so long since I’d heard this mentioned, that I’d half-forgotten it. Thanks for writing about it.
Oct 23, 2008 - 1:43 am 2. Emmet Sweeney:Try reading Bat Ye’or’s book, “The Dhimmi,” to get an idea of the horrific conditions Jews (and dhimmi Christians) were forced to endure under Muslim regimes for many centuries. A Jew or Christian could be quite literally slaughtered in the streets without any protection from the authorities. If for example a Jew or Christian was assaulted by a Muslim, and he complained to the authorities, the Muslim simply claimed that the dhimmi had insulted the Koran or Muhammed. He of course needed two Muslim withnessed (the word of a Jew or Christian counted for nothing), but two witnesses were always forthcoming. The result was invariably the execution of the Jew or Christian. Needless to say, the oppressed peoples quickly learned not to complain. Christians and Jews were also compelled to wear clothing by which they could be easliy identified – ever wonder where the Nazis got their ideas? It was under such conditions that the number of Christians and Jews eventually shrunk to vanishing point in every Muslim society. And the lefties dare to call this “tolerance.”
Oct 23, 2008 - 2:12 am 3. Ken Besig:No one cares about the Mizrachi Jews expelled from the Arab lands and who left fortunes behind when they were forced out, indeed, many were killed or badly injured when forced to leave. The State of Israel doesn’t care, the American Jews don’t care, and the Arabs just laugh about it. But is this really surprising? Just last week the Prime Minister of Israel travelled to Russia to hand over the deed to the Russians of some prime real estate in downtown Jerusalem which the Russians claim belongs to them. The Israeli PM asked for nothing in return even when he knew that the Soviet Union had illegally confiscated hundreds of acres of Jewish property in downtown Moscow and that since the Former Soviet Union had literally waged war against Israel for decades, the Russians had effectively relinquished any rights they may have had to property in Israel. Indeed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could have at least demanded a quid pro quo, but instead made the Russians happy and left the Jews to weep quietly. Moreover in all the peace discussions with Arab states Israel has never once made the return of Jewish property in Arab lands a part of the discussions nor have the Israelis ever raised the issue of monetary compensation to those Mizrachim who were expelled and robbed, while at the same time the Israeli diplomats have seriously considered letting thousands of Palestinian Arabs “return to their homeland” that is Israel, or paying them compensation for their supposed propery losses. This disgrace has gone on for decades and is rarely if ever raised by an Israeli politician, religious leader, or media pundit, and like I said about the Jewish property in Moscow, only one newspaper had the courage to ask how the Israeli Prime Minister could behave in such a craven manner. But that is what we Jews have become as a People, the craven People, who always want to check in advance if we are being too pushy, too demanding, too righteous, or too busy with our own human rights. For the modern Jewish community, everybody comes ahead of us and we are always wrong.
Oct 23, 2008 - 4:13 am 4. Suzanne Pomeranz:This is a VERY important piece of Middle Eastern History that not only needs to be written about but taught in schools – public schools, colleges, universities.
An organization exists to help spread the information and record personal experiences so they will NOT be lost to history. Go to: http://www.jimena.org/ for more information.
Oct 23, 2008 - 4:15 am 5. Dodgeblogium » Middle Eastern Jews…their plight:[...] refugees and persecuted you never hear about these days. Pajamas Media has an excellent piece on just this subject written by Ruet Cohen. Well worth the read, distressing though it [...]
Oct 23, 2008 - 5:25 am 6. R a Z o R:I see groups complaining and blaming others here in the U.S.A. and in the middle east .
Thank God for those that desire peace thru
strength .
________________________________________________
That is why I voted for John McCAIN last Friday .
________________ McCAIN * PALIN ________________
Oct 23, 2008 - 6:25 am 7. idov:Please don’t suggest that Olmert represents anything but his own miserable self. The guy botched the Lebanon War and didn’t have the decency to fall on his sword immediately after and is now being drummed out of office because he is a crook.
The Jews set their refugees on their feet despite having few resources while the Arabs let theirs rot in stinking camps to this day without even paying for their dole while building skycrapers upon luxurious skycrapers with their fabulous wealth. These “refugees” are being used as a potential weapon to destroy the State of Israel; the intent of the demand of the “right of return” is to have millions swamp the demographics of the country.
The claims of the Jewish refugees are not forgotten. In monetary terms, they lost billions of dollars in property; the Arabs loss is a fraction of that. There are two possible resolutions to the problem. Either the Arabs themselves abandon their claims and put up the funds to normalize these peoples’ lives where they are, chump change to them, in which case the Jewish claims will simply become moot; or if there is a formal plan adopted in a peace agreement, the Jewish claims will have to be addressed.
Oct 23, 2008 - 6:36 am 8. David H:Excellent article, I wish more people would read articles like this.
Oct 23, 2008 - 6:44 am 9. Saltherring:In the Bible, God admonishes his people to pray for Israel and for the peace of Jerusalem. I am a Christian who does. God Bless Israel and the Jewish people. And may He grant them the courage and strength to prevail over those who would destroy them.
Oct 23, 2008 - 7:18 am 10. African Moonbat:I heard this storey the other day on – believe it or not – BBC World Service radio. It is far better than their TV counterparts.
Oct 23, 2008 - 8:06 am 11. Laura:I walked into a shop yesterday to look at their Halloween items. Inside, I found a mug with a picture of Jesus holding coupons and a pair of scissors. The mug read “Jesus saves, why don’t you”……beside it was a little package of mints with his picture and the caption “save” your breath, buy these mints. I was outraged and asked the manager how she could sell such insulting and blasphemous items. I also asked her if she would sell the same items with Mohammed’s picture. I then replied, “one rule for Moslems, another for the rest.” In a sense, all this tip-toeing around Islam and Moslems is a form of dhimmitude that we have ALLOWED to infect our society. Jews and Christians (and I am a proud Jew) need to make sure that this cannot happen in North America.
Oct 23, 2008 - 8:07 am 12. Avi Cohen:Fantastic article, Reut. My family are also Jewish refugees from the Middle East and were treated abominably. The fact that this is rarely mentioned is disturbing when Jewish Mizrachim outnumbered the Arabs who became Palestinian refugees. The Israeli government needs to make this case. There was an exchange of population and both refugee issues are largely the responsibility of the Arab governments. Minorities in the Middle East are often treated horribly without any concern from human rights groups.
Oct 23, 2008 - 2:42 pm 13. What Happened to Middle Eastern Jewry? : The New Nixon: News and Commentary about the President, his Times, and his Legacy:[...] Cohen gives a personal anecdote in a larger untold story, illustrating what millions experienced: My paternal grandfather vividly [...]
Oct 23, 2008 - 4:08 pm 14. Matt Cooper:This is a great article and the message is very important.
Oct 23, 2008 - 8:59 pm 15. Sherri Bloomfield:I am so impressed that all of the reactions to this article are positive…it gives ME hope!
Oct 23, 2008 - 11:33 pm 16. Joseph Downing:Great article. You make a very good point. Despite all I have read about Middle Eastern Conflicts, I haven’t ever heard mention of the plight of Middle Eastern Jews.
Oct 24, 2008 - 8:36 am 17. Steynian 274 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] DON’T FORGET the Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands, post 1947 …. [...]
Oct 24, 2008 - 9:59 am 18. J.A.:Excellent article and timely.
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:03 am 19. Harold:This is an excellent article, as other commenters have said. I only hope that Reut Cohen publishes articles like these in campus newspapers (where they are REALLY needed).
Oct 26, 2008 - 8:10 am 20. Sean:Thank you for writing about the Farhud. My family barely escaped the blood-thirsty mobs and my uncles still have nightmares of seeing babies ripped apart. After the Farhud my grandfather started smuggling Jews out of Iraq and into Israel. When he was caught, the family fled to Israel, where they were placed in a refugee camp until they could be assimilated into the population. No one in my family has ever bothered petitioning the Israeli government to fight for the return of their wealth because they know that no one cares.
Oct 26, 2008 - 1:39 pm 21. Judy, NYC:israel should immediately and loudly demand return of the wealth of arab and persian jews who were forced to leave lands they lived on a thousand years. saudi princes, the mullahs and the other middle eastern ruling clans can afford it, perhaps they can just strip off their solid gold walls and sell off big heaps of solid gold jewel encrusted doorknobs. they talk about jerusalem, we talk about what they owe. we may have a very small window of time to do something. already europe is awash in anti-semitism. according to der speigel, this time brought to germans by hamas through the magic of satellite tv. kiddie shows, no less, indoctrinating little children with jew hatred. there will never be peace with islamists, despite every attempt at it, because their obsession with death permeates everything with the stench of rot. they rejoice in it, and their mad religion demands it. every so often, it is necessary to hit them in the face with a garbage can cover, just to awaken them to other possibilities. meantime, i find this rise of jew hating tiresome and becoming severely annoying. smashing that tv satellite for example, and leveling its hamas host could make quite a good beginning.
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:10 pm 22. Alex Bensky:Sorry, this isn’t relevant. Only oppression of Arabs counts, and then only if it’s by Jews. Bringing up the plight of Jewish refugees is generally referred to as “divisive.”
One may as well ask why the thirty million European refugees after World War II are not in camps, the millions of Hindus and Moslems who went between Pakistan and India are not in camps, and for that matter, why the Ionian Greeks, whose ancestors had lived in what is now western Turkey for three thousand years, are not in refugee camps.
Only Arab refugees are entitled to return to their lands of origin. By the way, only Arabs are allowed to start and lose as many wars as they want without ever having to give up anything. That’s why Russia, for example, isn’t about to disgorge its many conquests but the occupation of the West Bank is affront to human decency.
Oct 27, 2008 - 3:44 am 23. steven mukamal:I was two years old when my father was making arrangements to send me and my brothers and sisters,my mother and his mother north to where the kurds live. he changed all our names th germanic names. his fear that rommel would succeed in africa, and all the jews living in bagdad would be sent to death camps. my mother’s family had been living in the bagdad area since her forefathers were herded from jerusalem to babylonia by nabuhedneser,some 2000 thousand years ago. we were lucky to survive this ordeal, but luckier that we came to america. my father had to relinquish all his assets as payment for exit visas .
Oct 31, 2008 - 11:20 am