Jewish-Arab Refugees
Jews have lived for millennia all around the Middle East, in what are now Muslim-dominated countries. The dispersion of Jews from ancient Israel through the catastrophe of the diaspora forced upon Jews by conquest saw that culture and religion displaced to countries world wide. Not only throughout the Middle East, but Europe, Africa and the Far East as well.Jewish neighbourhoods were well established in countries of the Middle East well before Islam was established. There were ancient Jewish ghettos in Italy, Spain, Portugal, in India, China, Ethiopia. So while much has been made of the 700,000 Palestinians having been made homeless with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it's peculiar that there is no official recognition of their Jewish counterparts.
A greater number of Jews - some 856,000 - were forcefully expelled from Arab countries after the creation of the State of Israel, their homes forfeited, their belongings seized. They became refugees, migrating to the country whose existence hardened the resolve of the neighbouring Arab countries to formulate oppressively violent policies toward Jews.
The U.S. House of Representatives, along with the U.S. Senate, is in the process of passing a resolution that is meant to give equal treatment to the issue of those refugee populations, Jewish and Palestinian. The current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks take into account the plight of the Palestinian refugees whose numbers have swelled over the decades to 3.7 billion.
Their existence as refugees, and their avowed determination to return to land and homes that were once theirs and abandoned as the collective Arab states prepared to launch an attack on the new Jewish state, is a major sticking point in the peace negotiations. The "right of return" would effectively extinguish the majority of Jews within Israel, were it to be agreed to.
Balanced against the reality of the enforced expulsion of a larger number of Jews living in Arab lands, the situation might be amenable to an altered perspective. What then of the right of return - or of reparations - on behalf of the greater number of Jewish refugees? The original 700,000 Palestinian refugees received the immediate material assistance of the United Nations in building refugee camps, in providing food, shelter, medications.
The expelled Jews were welcomed into Israel, the substantial costs of their re-settlement taken up by the fledgling Jewish State, with no outside assistance from the world at large. With the continued emphasis on the need of the Palestinians and the ongoing disregard of the rights of expelled Jews as refugees, perspective remains warped, unequal and illogical.
Are the Arab countries, now so adamant that Israel meet all the requirements of the Arab League for recognition of their right of existence and general peace, ready to accept their responsibility for the plight of the exiled Jewish refugees, and to make good on recompense for their grievous losses?
Life is complicated. It never becomes simplified. There are always additional factors to consider. Consider this one.
Labels: Israel, Justice, Middle East, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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