Yes, a shade under 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries in 1948, the vast majority of them shaken down for all they were worth before being unceremoniously shown the door.
Stanley Urman wants to get that in writing.
The executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries is helping to launch an international advocacy campaign to collect testimony and documentation of the "murder, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, stripping of citizenship and seizure of property" suffered by Jews prior to their expulsion.
"The primary objective is to ensure that the rights of former Jewish refugees from Arab countries are dealt with in any Middle East peace process," said Urman, who will be in the Bay Area next week to meet with the San Francisco-based Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) for a briefing on the campaign.
"Whenever there's an explicit reference to Palestinian refugees, there must also be a reference to Jewish refugees. This is not about money. It's about rights and recognition."
The first thing Urman would like is a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t from the Arab nations themselves, which have never formally acknowledged the organized plunder and expulsion of their Jewish communities — communities that had been in place since long before the birth of Jesus.
And the redress for the Jews' expulsion isn't as simple as cutting a few hundred thousand checks and dropping them in the mail.
"It could be endowment funds to protect Jewish holy cites like cemeteries. It might be setting up chairs at a university to study the rich culture of Mizrachi Jews in Arab countries. And it might also be compensation for lost communal and personal property," said Urman, a Quebec-born New Jerseyan who does not have a drop of Arab Jewish blood in his veins but finds himself compelled to the cause.
Urman sometimes finds himself on the receiving end of harangues by pro-Palestinians who say that by raising the issue, he is deliberately tossing a monkey wrench into any possible Mideast peace plan.
Not so, he says. But the world should stop treating the Palestinians as if they have a monopoly on the refugee business.
"Why have the rights of Palestinian refugees gotten such wide-ranging recognition? At last count, 101 United Nations resolutions focused on the rights of Palestinian refugees. Not one has focused on Jewish refugees," he said.
"Why? There are those who say Israel was created to take Jewish refugees, so there's no need to take care of this issue. Meanwhile, the Arab world has turned its back on the Palestinians, and all of the sudden they're the wards of the international community. There are those who say there was a deliberate attempt by the Arab world to not allow any resolutions to be discussed by the U.N. There are those who say that because of the Soviet and Third World and Islamic blocs, there's no way any pro-Jewish resolution could have found the light of day. And there are those who say anti-Semitism."
But, Urman maintains, progress is being made. He points to recent comments by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who stated "A refugee is a refugee. I think we've got to be prepared [to take Jewish claims] into consideration."
Still, "success could dissolve into failure" if written records of human rights abuses and communal and personal losses aren't produced. So, in March of 2006, an effort to collect such records will be launched in 14 nations.
"We're encouraging people to write their stories and register their losses," Urman said.
Locals with a story to tell are encouraged to contact JIMENA at (415) 977-7407.
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01/11/2011 at 02:41 PM
Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict
Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation; these were compiled by a Christian university professor. It makes sense and it’s not slanted. Jew and non-Jew –it doesn’t matter. Thank You.
1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugeegroup in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples’ lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab – Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians.
There is only one Jewish nation.
The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost.
Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The P.L.O.’s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
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