In recent times, the plight of the descendants of about 700,000 Palestinian refugees who fled the State of Israel during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence has dominated headlines. This is especially the case following the renewal of the UNRWA mandate, reports that Palestinian refugees from Syria are demanding to be de-registered from UNRWA so that they can qualify for resettlement in a third country and the corruption allegations against the international aid organization that led to the resignation of UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl.
However, while the plight of the descendants of Palestinian refugees is widely discussed, not many people speak about the plight of the over 850,000 Jews who were compelled to leave the Arab world and their descendants.
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However, this reality should change for it is impossible to understand the Palestinian refugee crisis without taking note of the plight of Jewish refugees from the Arab world. Historian Benny Morris claims in Righteous Victims that there were a number of reasons why the Palestinians fled Israel in 1948.
The reasons for Palestinian flight ranged from the collapse in law and order following the withdrawal of the British to the terror imposed by the Husayni clan to fear caused by hostilities and the outbreak of violence, etc. However, the reasons for the Jewish exodus from the Arab world were rather uniform. Prominent Middle East scholar Yaakov Meron wrote in The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, "There was a deliberate policy on the part of the Arab League countries to drive out the Jews."
As Heykel Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, declared on Nov. 24, 1947, "If the UN decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for the massacre of a large number of Jews. If a Jewish state were established, no one can prevent the disorders. Riots would break out in Palestine, would spread throughout all of the Arab states and it might lead to a war between two races." Immediately after the Partition Plan was adopted by the UN, there were massacres against Jews in Aden, Yemen and Aleppo, Syria. Anti-Jewish pogroms soon became the norm across the Arab world. Furthermore, Meron noted that Pasha presented an expulsion plan for the Jewish communities in the Arab world four months before the mass exodus of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 War began: "It was in reaction to the UN Resolution regarding the Partition of Palestine." In the end, Jews would be formally expelled from Egypt and Iraq. However, horrific massacres and other human rights abuses would prompt Jews to flee Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, and the entire Arab world.
As Alevin Peretz, who was born in Algeria, related: "They murdered my father on the way to synagogue. I was 6-and-a-half years old. It was a trauma. There was a great fear. We felt the need to leave Algeria and to go to Israel." Flora Cohen, who was born in Morocco, came to Israel after her brother was almost murdered. The only reason why her brother survived is that a colleague testified that he was an Arab from Fez and was not Jewish when a terrorist tried to murder him. These are not isolated cases. Over 50% of the Israeli population is descended from Jews from Arabic speaking countries, who have similar stories in their families.
According to former Israel Consul General Dr. Yitzhak Ben Gad, this grave crime against humanity committed against the Jews from Arabic speaking countries led to the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Ben Gad met with Baron Caradon, one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242, who told him explicitly that his resolution was meant to address the refugee problem in general and not the Palestinian refugees exclusively. As Ben Gad noted, "There was a lot more Jewish property that was stolen and looted in the Arab world than there was property that the Palestinian refugees left behind in 1948."
However, he noted that while Palestinian leaders always exploit the distress of their refugees for political gain and the Arab states refuse to grant equality to their Palestinian residents, "Israel never made a political issue out of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who are granted equal rights as Israeli citizens. My life story is a perfect example of this. I am a refugee from Libya but I became an Israel Consul General." Former MK Anat Berko, Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev and many other important figures in Israel are descended from Jews who were compelled to flee Arabic speaking countries. In contrast, the Palestinian refugees and their descendants live under apartheid-like conditions in Lebanon. And in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Syria, they are residing among the rubble.
This reality is a testament to the failure of the UNRWA system, which forces Palestinians to live in squalor until Israel implements a Right of Return that merely will never happen. As a result, Palestinians today are condemned from one generation to the next to always be poor stateless refugees without a future because they were excluded from the UNHCR, which is committed to resettling refugees in a third country when the host country is unwilling to absorb them. In contrast, the Jews from Arab countries were absorbed and found their home in the State of Israel. They had no need for a third country for resettlement.
This is why UNRWA is morally bankrupt for they are providing services that the Arab states needed to give to their Palestinian citizens and by doing so are enabling them to continue to not properly absorb the descendants of Palestinian refugees, who were born in their countries. To add insult to injury, they are also not permitting Palestinians that are fed up with a situation to move to a third country, even if they were born in a place like Syria. Additionally, Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations, and Human Rights, proclaimed: "The Jewish refugees are truly refugees, who were expelled from Muslim countries without being permitted to take anything but a bag of clothing. During the Arab Spring, I uncovered ancient Jewish religious objects and other Jewish antiquities from the Muslim world. They were sold at excessive prices because it was believed that the Jewish community would pay a lot of money to get these items back."
"This is a strong indictment against those claiming to protect refugees worldwide," he noted. "While UNRWA preserves the refugee status of Palestinians, they bury the stories of the Jews from Arab countries and dispossess Jewish refugees of their rights." The UN should be solving refugee crises, not permeating them. The time has come for UNRWA to be reformed. The time has come for the world to recognize that the forgotten Jewish refugees and their descendants should also be compensated for their family's suffering.
