39 thoughts on “Arab Jews: the ‘Nakba’ That Wasn’t – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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      1. “Because Iran also had a close relationship with Israel, Iran’s Jews could rest comfortably, as their fellow Arab Jews in other countries faced a perilous existence.”

        However, unlike other Arab countries, 25,000 Jews remain today in Iran”

        Sorry to be pedantic, but both sentences imply that Iran is Arab. For Iranian Jews, Arab Jews are not “their fellow Arab Jews” because they’re not Arab Jews. In the second sentence, the phrase “other Arab countries” implies Iran is an Arab country.

        1. Either you’re not reading closely enough or you’re misunderstanding my meaning. All Jews are fellow Jews to other Jews whether they are Arab, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, etc. I didn’t say, nor did I mean to say that Iranian Jews were Arab Jews. They are Iranian Jews who happen to be fellow Jews to Arab Jews. I suppose I could have written “their fellow Jews in other Arab countries.”

          the phrase “other Arab countries” implies Iran is an Arab country.

          If you want to misread my intent, be my guest. But the phrase actually meant “in other countries, which happen to be Arab.” That’s a terribly awkward locution, so I didn’t use it. I could have said “in other Muslim countries.” But I didn’t alas.

  1. I first heard the distinction “Arab” vs. “Jew” during my visit to Haifa, 1998. I asked my host, whatever happened to Arab Jews? The term was an oxymoron for most there.

  2. @Richard. Richard. Richard.

    Maimonides, who you brought up, knew something about life under Arab rule.

    In 1159, Maimonides and his family fled the ferocious persecution of Jews by the Almohads in Muslim Spain.
    Maimonides fled to Fez, where he could live once he’d converted to Islam, which he did. His teacher, Judah ibn Sussan, chose martyrdom in 1165.

    Maimonides next moved to Egypt, where the Fatimids were more tolerant towards Jews and where Maimonides eventually became the doctor to the Sultan of Egypt.
    In the Sultan’s Egypt, Maimonides could return to practicing Judaism, but his host the Sultan, treated Maimonides no better than an educated slave.

    Maimonides was certainly aware that Crusaders were slaughtering European Jews when he wrote in his ‘Epistle to the Jews of Yemen’, that the Nation of Ishmael is the most cruel to the Jews of all the Nations.

    1. @ Kareem: As you offer no sources for your claims, I’m going to take your account of Maimonides various tribulations as tentative pending proof. Not discounting it, but urging you in all cases to offer credible sources.

      As for Maimonides’ view of Muslim/Arab as opposed to Christian attitudes toward Jews, he had no direct experience of life for Jews among Christian lands. His only direct experience was of living in Arab lands. So naturally he bemoaned this compared to life among Christians. But Jewish historians confirm that many more Jews died, were expelled, had their homes and towns destroyed, or lived in ghettos in Christendom than in Arab lands.

      To argue otherwise shows either ignorance of the historical record or bad faith (or both).

      1. Actually, Maimonides understood full well how badly Crusaders treated Jews.

        When Maimonides arrived with his family to Eretz Yisroel, they settled in Acre, which was than the main Crusader port in the Levant. 

        Finding that the local Jewish community was living in a state of desperate poverty and political oppression at the hands of the Christian Crusaders, Maimonides and family removed themselves to Egypt, finally settling in Fostat, the Old City of Cairo. 

        Maimonides had lived a full five months in Acre.

        Once having established his medical credentials in Cairo, Maimonides was asked by the medical guild there to go to Ascalon and treat a Frankish king, but
        Maimonides declined the guild’s request.

        This incident would have been during one of the peace accords the Muslims and Crusaders occasionally entered into.

        1. @Sasha: You didn’t bother to read the comment on which you were commenting. That commenter was trying to prove that Muslims treated Jews far worse than Christians. You have proven the opposite, that Christians treated Jews far worse than Muslims. Which is exactly what almost all credible historians of Jewish history report as well.

  3. Richard said:

    “Iraq–In 1941, anti-Jewish sentiment peaked and there were riots, known as the Farhud, in which nearly 200 Jews lost their lives, along with looting of businesses and homes”. 

    One thousand Iraqi Jews were injured, including many rape victims, and 900 Jewish homes destroyed.

    Richard said:

    “The Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization”.

    Bullshit. 

    Or, maybe the Iraqis had failed to tell the CIA agent that Iraqi police had already arrested a Christian officer in the Iraqi army known for his anti-Jewish views, was arrested, but apparently not charged, with the offenses. A number of explosive devices similar to those used in the attack on the Jewish synagogue were found in his home. 

    And since you brought it up, Iraqi Jews were faced with persecution even before the Baghdad pogrom of 1941, aka, the ‘Farhud’.
    In both 1934 and 1936, hundreds of Jews holding government jobs, were fired, purged if you will, while other Iraqi Jews were denied entry to government and private schools of higher education.

    See, ‘The Jewish Exodus From Iraq’ by Moshe Gat.

    1. @ Kareem: Anecdotal evidence of a single police officer allegedly being involved with the bombings without any source offered is worth precisely nothing.

      Further, if I have a choice between believing a pro Israel propagandist and a CIA station chief, I’ll pick the latter every day.

      I make specific reference to the Farhud violence and the deaths and destruction of Jewish property. So you’re essentially repeating what I already said, but claiming it is something I didn’t include. Which shows bad faith or carelessness. I never said life was a bed of roses for Jews. In fact, I mentioned that for all Jews but the elite, they were second class citizens. And I also included numerous accounts of violence against Jews. But they key point is that the incidents of violence were eruptions of popular anger usually incited by Zionist agitation. They were not systematic programs of expulsion or genocide (directed at Jews as a religious minority).

      No more comments in this thread.

      1. But they key point is that the incidents of violence were eruptions of popular anger usually incited by Zionist agitation”

        Kareem’s comments show that there was popular, Nazi-like anger and government policies directed against Iraqi Jews in the 1930’s, and popular Nazi (or Mufti) inspired violence against Iraqi Jews in the early 1940’s.

        Neither instances of popular anger or violence against Iraqi Jews in the 1930’s or early 1940’s were incited by Zionist agitation.

        By the late 1940’s and 1950, Iraqi Jewry had had it with Iraq’s Arab nationalist governments, and fled their homeland for the relative safety of Israel.

        1. @ Nate Depp: I’m repeating here what I wrote to “Kareem.” You are repeating in your comment what I wrote in my post. Don’t do that. I note there that in the 1930s some Arab nationalists were sympathetic to the Nazis, just as Jewish nationalist were, if not sympathetic, at least willing to negotiate and do business with them. Arab sympathy for Hitler no more proves an eternal hatred of Jews than Avodah’s Haavara Agreement proves a Jewish romance with Nazism.

          Similarly, do NOT publish more than one post in a thread at a time. If you do this, you monopolize the threads. One post at a time.

          Again, as I wrote in my post: while there were incidents of violence against Jews before 1948, there were not systematic, not organized, nor part of a plan to eliminate or expel all Jews (as Ben Gurion’s expulsion of Palestinians was such a plan).

          As for Iraqi Jews coming to Israel: they neither enjoyed relative safety nor equal treatment to the Ashkenazi majority. They died fighting in Israel’s wars while living in slum-like encampments. They faced massive discrimination and disdain from native Israelis. It was by no means the land of milk and honey promised by the Zionist emissaries who recruited them.

  4. Richard, candidly speaking on the exodus of Algerian Jews said:

    “But they were not driven out by violence or virulent anti-Semitism as in other Arab lands.” 

    Uhhh…which Arab lands are you talking about?

    Richard, your additional comments on Algerian Jewry are risible.

    Jews living in Algeria in 1963, woke up one day and found they were not citizens in the country of their birth. The Algerian government had revoked their citizenship because they were Jews, and only because they were Jews.

    If that’s not anti-Semitism, than what is?

    “The Jews had been between a rock and a hard place for quite some time already. Muslim antisemitism reached its peak with the eruption of the Constantine pogrom of 1934, in which 25 Jews were killed. French antisemitism reached its zenith in WW2. Under Vichy rule, Jews not only were stripped of their French nationality, but were sacked from public service jobs and subject to quotas and restrictions.
    Citizenship was reinstated in 1943 as the Vichy regime collapsed. Many Jews saw themselves as Frenchmen of the Jewish faith – Français israelites.

    Arab Algerians embarked on an ever more brutal campaign of decolonisation in the 1950s, while the pieds noirs engaged in equally brutal counter-terror. The Jewish community originally maintained an official position of neutrality, but they joined the French camp after violent attacks including the burning of the Great Synagogue in Algiers in December 1960. Arabs went on the rampage ripping memorial plaques from the walls, and torching books and Torah scrolls.

    Like the pieds noirs, the Jews were faced with a stark choice: suitcase or coffin. They scrambled to reach seaports and airports. By the time Algeria had declared independence on 3 July 1962, all but a few thousand Jews had left for France. Algeria’s ‘Nationality Code’, passed in 1963, deprived all non-muslims of Algerian citizenship, forcing any remaining Jews into exile.”

    https://www.pilotguides.com/articles/the-forgotten-jews-of-algeria/

    1. “Jews living in Algeria in 1963 woke up one day and found out they were not citizens in the country of their birth. The Algerian government had revoked their citizenship and blablah”
      Total BS, you don’t know what you’re talking about ! How could the Algerian government revoke a citizenship that didn’t exist until 1963. The “Jews of Algeria” (Juifs d’Algérie) that’s the way they were called and call themselves until today (as opposed to the Morrocan and Tunisian Jews who link their identity to the people and not the territory) were French citizen and mostly left with their “new compatriots”. Read Benjamin Stora on the topic, such as his “Les trois exils”

    2. @ Kareem: Read the comment rules. Do not publish more than a single comment at a time in a thread. Publishing 3 comments at one time monopolies the threads and my time responding. One comment at a time.

      Do NOT repeat claims I’ve already reported in my post. I reported the loss of citizenship in the post. Then you repeated the exact same information. Repetition is boring and mind-numbing. Don’t do it.

      Jews weren’t the only group refused citizenship. There were other ethnic and religious groups in Algeria, not to mention pieds noir or those of French origin. None of them retained citizenship. So this was not specifically anti-Semitic. Unless you wish to claim it was also anti-Christian, anti-French, etc.

      Again, much of the violence against Jews WAs due to the agitation of Zionism and emissaries from Palestine who advanced a national-political identity, rather than a religious one. Jews lived in these countries for centuries without facing major prejudice or violence. The sole reason thsi changed was Israel’s wars against Muslim-Arab states and deliberate provocations of Zionism within the countries themselves.

      Nothing you’ve written contradicts my own account. Everything you claim is included in general terms in my post.

  5. This is an extensive topic, each country has is own history as far as its Jewish population is concerned.
    I have a few remarks on the country that I know best, Algeria: the war 1954-1962 was not a civil war but a war of independence, even French normalized discourse names it so (to Algerians it was of course a war of liberation and is called so also by left-wing French observers).
    Saying that Algerian citizenship was denied to non-Muslims is not totally correct:
    1. In 1870, the Jewish population of French colonized Algeria became French citizens through the Décret Crémieux (named after a French Jew), the Muslims did not. Colonial divide-and-rule.
    2. According to the Accord d’Évian and the Code of the Algerian Nationality, article 9 French citizens could stay in Algeria after independence (1962) as French citizens or individually ask to become Algerian citizens whereas Algerian citizensship was automatically granted to Muslim Algerians (who had no citizenship during the French occupation).
    According to historian Benjamin Stora (himself born into a Jewish family in Algeria prior to independence) some 200.000 French citizens among them 10.000-20.000 Jews remained in Algeria after independence, most as French citizens.
    Also Tunisian and Morrocan Jews as well as their descendants still have or can reclaim their citizenship, the latest Morrocan constitution reaffirmed this eternal right.
    I personnally know a Tunisian Jew who returned home after the 2011 Revolution and even ran for Parliament.
    Thousands of Tunisian and particularly Morrocan Jews living in France have secondary homes in their homeland and go there every summer.
    Really not comparable to the Nakba.

    1. Oui says:

      “10.000-20.000 Jews remained in Algeria after independence, most as French citizens.”

      Right. Ninety-five percent of Algerian Jews fled, and five percent,10,000-20,000, remained, but by the time the dust settled after the Six Day War (1967), fewer than 1,000 Algerian Jews remained in Algeria.

      The Great Synagogue in Algiers was burned and desecrated in December 1960 and than turned into a rebel headquarters.

      “Rebel leaders charged that the rioting had started after Jews had fired on them from the balconies and windows of their homes. Jewish leaders indignantly denied these accusations as utterly false. Some of the rebel leaders told Paris newspapermen that their slogan, “Moslem Algeria,” meant they will no longer tolerate Jews in Algeria. Other rebels, however, said the slogan did not mean they were against the Jews.”–https://www.jta.org/archive/jews-in-algiers-tense-moslem-rebels-make-synagogue-their-headquarters

      The slogan, “Moslem Algeria,” meant they will no longer tolerate Jews in Algeria.

      Not at all comparable to the Nakba.
      Nope.

      1. First, I’m not Oui.
        So all you have is an article from 1960 about the taking over of the grande synagogue in the Casbah by the Algerian rebels ? Do you know what happened in the Casbah during the war of liberation ? If not, I suggest you see Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece “The Battle of Algiers”.
        And in case you don’t know there used to be a mosque there, Sidi al-Harbi going back to the 14th century, the French colonizers sold it to members of the Jewish community who destroyed the mosque and built a synagogue on top. Facts that you can easily verify with our friend Google.
        I also suggest that you read the book I mentionned “Les trois exils” by Benjamin Stora or procure a 2012 special edition on “Les Juifs d’Algerie” by French Jewish magazine l’Arche.
        So I’ve lived most of my adult life in France, and I’ve never heard a Jew from Algeria claiming he’s a refugee … they were French citizens and left with the French.
        PS. I also have to mention that the Front de Libération National specifically adressed the Jewish population in Algeria on various occasions asking them to side with the liberation movement, but unfortunately only a few did, such as Daniel Timsit whereas many French Jewish intellectuals from the mainland sided with the liberation movement, many risking their lives.

        1. @Deir Yassin

          Regarding the founding of the Grand Synagogue, my understanding is that, ‘In 1839 the French government tore down several buildings and synagogues in the Jewish quarter as part of urban renewal and promised in return to provide 120,000 francs toward the construction of a grand synagogue. 25 years later, after much bureaucratic hassle, the site was finally inaugurated on September 19, 1865.’

          Regarding the FLN’s mindless assault on the synagogue, ‘They went on a rampage inside, ripping torah scrolls and leaving the torn parchments strewn on the front steps. Memorial plaques – including the two large monuments to Algiers Jews killed during World War I – were ripped off the walls. Rebels raised their green and white flag atop the synagogue. “Death to the Jews” and swastikas were daubed on the walls. After two days of wild rioting, which included attacks on nearby Jewish shops and homes, French forces restored order. But the synagogue – and its community – would never be restored.’

          Death to the Jews.

          http://archive.diarna.org/site/detail/public/292/

          BTW, I watched Battle of Algiers 30 years ago. An excellent film.

          1. @ Sasha: The source you quote does not offer a source for its alleged historical account. So I’m not prepared to grant it credibility. Also I read the About page of this website says it seeks to preserve the remnants of North African life before it is entirely lost. In fact, this is not the condition of these communities. In several countries, as I noted in my post, synagogues and cemeteries have been restored. In some countries like Morocco a community exists and is by no means “lost.” Another bit of praise for the site from a right-wing pro-Israel scholar obsessed with a global anti-Semitism plot to kill Jews :

            “[I]n many cases, Diarna’s virtual records are all that stand between these centuries-old treasures & total oblivion….–Dara Horn

            So it would appear to me this website & those behind it have their own ideological ax to grind.

            I would have no problem with an NGO like Centropa which seeks to promote and preserve existing Eastern European Jewish life. But an NGO that treats Jewish life as dead and needing to be preserved in mothballs is not helpful.

            You are done in this thread.

      2. @ Nate Depp: What you conveniently omit from your faux history exercise is that Zionists fomented much of the hatred by dividing native Jews from their Muslim fellow citizens. Jews lived relatively peacefully for over a millennium. Yet within a decades Jewish communities were decimated. The fire of hatred was fanned by Zionists. Not to say that Arab countries themselves didn’t play a role in this. Of course they did. But you want to erase a critical piece of the historical record, and we won’t let you.

        No more comments in this thread.

  6. Richard, you said that, “Because the Jewish Brigade had been stationed in the country after the defeat of the Nazis, the tenets of Zionism took root in the community.”

    I don’t believe that statement to be accurate.

    The Jewish Brigade fought exclusively in Europe and had never been stationed in Libya.

    A Palestine Regiment, made up of Jews and Arabs from Palestine, did fight the Nazis in Libya, but was removed to Europe in 1944, well before the Libya pogroms in 1945.

    So, that dog won’t hunt.

    Moreover, an actual eyewitness who lived the Libyan pogrom, neither blames the victims nor libels the Jewish Agency.

    https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/?s=An+eye+witness+account+of+the+1945+pogrom

    Woof.

    1. @ Nate Depp: My account of the Jewish Brigade comes from the Wikipedia article on the Jews of Arab lands. If you think this is wrong, you’d best add your view in the discussion page for the article. Until I see a credible source saying otherwise (which you haven’t offered), I’ll stick with Wikipedia.

      A single account of indeterminate credibility is just that. I’ve offered multiple sources for many of these accounts for just this reason.

      Also “pogrom” is a loaded term seeking to link the experience of Arab Jews to the suffering of European Jews and indirectly to the Holocaust. This is something that should be avoided at all costs. The experiences of Jews in Arab lands are totally different than those in Christian Europe. The terms used must reflect that.

      1. Richard, you said that, “Because the Jewish Brigade had been stationed in the country after the defeat of the Nazis, the tenets of Zionism took root in the community”.

        I offer you this;

        “In October 1944, under the leadership of Brigadier Ernest F. Benjamin, the brigade group was shipped to Italy and joined the British Eighth Army in November, which was engaged in the Italian Campaign under the 15th Army Group.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Brigade#Military_engagements

        As I said, the Jewish Brigade was in Europe, not North Africa, in 1945.

        And by all means, Richard, stick with Wikipedia, which labels the massacre of Jews in Tripoli a ‘pogrom’.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_anti-Jewish_riots_in_Tripolitania

        Richard, the point isn’t whether Arabs can commit a pogrom, or where in Europe the Jewish Brigade was in 1945. The point is, that neither the Jewish Agency nor the Jewish Brigade had the slightest thing to do with the Tripoli pogrom.

        1. @ Nate Depp: The Palestinian Regiment preceded, and became the Jewish Brigade:

          The British garrisoned the Palestine Regiment in Cyrenaica, which later became the core of the Jewish Brigade, which was later also stationed in Tripolitania.

          As for Wikipedia’s description of anti-Jewish violence in Libya, it is not Moses’ tablets from Mt. Sinai. It is a useful source in general terms on some subjects. But not every word is to be treated as sacred.

          You are done in this thread.

        2. If neither the Libyan Jewish victims, or the Jewish Agency, or the Jewish Brigade weren’t the cause of the Libyan pogrom, than who is?

          The answer may lie in an Oct. 2, 1945, newspaper article from the main Arab newspaper in Tripoli, which published a startling account of a meeting in Damascus between Muslim religious leaders; which leaders has spoken of rumours of a United Nations plan to partition Palestine.

          The newspaper said that the rumours had aroused the scorn of the religious leaders who supported ‘any action aimed at eliminating the Jews of Arab countries’.–Renzo De Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970, page 364, notes 11 and 12.

          1. @ Sasha: “If” the Jewish Agency didn’t do it? Neither you nor the other hasbarists here have proven that it didn’t. So your hypothetical is unfounded.

            As for your souirce: you claim an unanamed newspaper published an account of a meeting of unnamed leaders in which an unnamed rumor was scorned.

            And all this published by an author I’ve never heard of. Sorry, but it doesn’t make the grade.

          2. Renzo DeFelice is very well known in Italy and among academics as a 20th century Italian historian specializing in the study of Fascism. The book Sasha is referring to, Ebrei in un paese arabo: gli ebrei nella Libia contemporanea tra colonialismo, nazionalismo arabo e sionismo (1835–1970) (Available on Amazon as “Jews in an Arab Land: Jews in contemporary Libya between colonialism, Arab nationalism and Zionism (1835-1970)”) is without a doubt, the most complete and authoritative historical study of the Jews of Libya in that era. Just so you know.

  7. Even today, we can see that Jews are far more endangered in Israel than in the Diaspora. For every Jew killed in a terror attack outside Israel, more are killed in war and terror attacks inside Israel.

    blaming the victims for the evil of the perpetrators. The Arabs conquered the land from the Byzantiums. They lost it just like they lost Spain by the same method they took it. End of story,.

    Richard, Bat Yeor, and Lynn Julius would totally disagree withyou. Pardon me, if i take the side of Mizrahi Jews, over the few anecdotal sources you cite.

    You omitted to mention somehting that discredits your entire narrative. Most mizrahi Jews in Israel, are more anti Arab than Askhnezi Jews, even the most right wing.

    I suggest you go and live in Israel for a while.

    1. @ You’re offering Bat Yeor and Lyn Julius as your proof? Two of the most biased untrustworthy sources one could dig up?

      You aren’t taking the side of Mizrahi Jews. Many of them totally disagree with you. You’re taking the side of the tendentious Zionist narrative, which is much different.

      Your claims about Mizrahi Jews are also untrustworthy. Many Mizrahi Jews feel just the opposite to what you claim. Generalizations tend to flatten reality, rather than reflect it. Especially when they’re used to advance a Zionist narrative.

      I suggest you not offer me any advice about what I should do. Besides, I lived in Israel for two years and studied at the Hebrew University in Hebrew-taught courses, and speak Hebrew fluently. I suggest you haven’ t the faintest idea who you’re dealing with.

  8. Richard, if those Arab countries who let their Jews go (I will accept your argument it was not a ‘nakba’) did not accept the Palestinian refugees, then your analysis is not a fair one.

    You said to the some of the commenters that they are ‘Zionists’. In other words, the Zionists alone claim that their was a ‘Nakba’ for supposedly dubious reasons of taking Palestine? If that is true, then you cannot have the same bias as an antiZionist and expect us to accept it.

    There is the case of Pakistani Zionism. When India was forced to cede terrirtory to Pakistan, there was a forced population exchange. The Hindus and other in Pakistan contolloed territory had to leave and vice versa.

    Now the real issue about the Arab jewish refugees is this. They had the right to stay in the Middle East and should have suffered no consequences regardless of what was going on in Palestine. The Arab States should not have let them go, but doing so they gave Zionism a legitimacy it did not deserve at the beginning. Don’t you agree? They kept Jewish property, why? They need to compensate all those Jews, and take in the Palestinian refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and around the world. Just like India and Pakistan partook in a population exchange, so should Israel and the Arab states. That is a fair solution to the whole refugee problem.

    The interesting thing here, is that the Arab Jews do not want to return to Arab lands.

    1. @ Anupam: Well if it isn’t our Hindutva hasbaroid back among us!

      if those Arab countries who let their Jews go…did not accept the Palestinian refugees, then your analysis is not a fair one.

      Arab countries have absolutely no obligation to accept Palestinian refugees (though many did). They are Palestinian, born in Palestine, indigenous to Palestine. Not to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, etc. Israel expelled them. It is Israel’s responsibility to repair the injustice by offering them Return to their prior homes. Jews have much experience with forced exile. Believe me, it is traumatic, even deadly. I wish it on no one, Palestinian or Jew. Besides, such for e population exchanges are explicitly forbidden under Geneva Conventions.

      you cannot have the same bias as an antiZionist and expect us to accept it.

      I don’t permit you to tell me what I am, what I believe or otherwise characterize my views. I do that and need no help from you. Nor do I care whether you “accept” my definition or not.

      There is the case of Pakistani Zionism.

      A nonsensical term.

      They had the right to stay in the Middle East and should have suffered no consequences regardless of what was going on in Palestine.

      That too is nonsensical. Of course your statement is true in theory. But the Middle East doesn’t deal well in theories. It only deals with cold hard reality; which was this: Jews lived peacefully in the region for 2,000. But in one short decade, Zionism destroyed an entire Jewish civilization. With the help of callous Arab leaders, of course. But the main new ingredient in this was Zionism and its effort to infiltrate and sabotage Arab Jewish life.

      Just like India and Pakistan partook in a population exchange, so should Israel and the Arab states.

      Yes, because that population exchange between India and Pakistan went so well for the victims didn’t it? How many were slaughtered on each side? Millions. THere is absolutely no reason for such a population exchange. Of course, Arab Jews should be, and in many cases are, free to return to their homeland. Palestinians must be free to return to theirs. ANything else is a violation of international law and a denial of democracy and the rule of law.

      The interesting thing here, is that the Arab Jews do not want to return to Arab lands

      Not “interesting” and not true. When there is true normalization and a resolution of conflict then Arab Jews will return to their homelands in significant numbers. Some are doing so now. Do not offer slogans or opinion disguised as fact. You must offer credible sources for your claims. Where you do not, you will not be believed.

      You are done in this thread.

  9. Why hasn’t anyone objected to what Richard said here:
    It was the Zionist determination to declare a state–despite warnings from Arab leaders that this was a red line they could not countenance–

    Richard is saying Jews should cower when anyone threatens them if they seek independence. Thanks G-d for Moshe and Joshua. Recall, even in Egypt there were some Jews who preferred to live as slaves than join the mulititude and go for independence.

    But even if we take this argument to its logical conclusion, it can be turned on its head. It could be said, the the Arabs who refused to accept partition were warned bloodshed would follow. But they still chose to refuse to let Jews have the same independence they craved themselves. And they paying the price to this day. Except, those that realise their mistakes.

    Just curious, Richard, what do you make of the UAE assertions that Arabs were wrong to reject the creation of Israel from the onset? That was a mistake, which you seem to think was not.

    1. @ Tiff:

      Richard is saying

      Don’t EVER presume to summarize, characterize or otherwise speak in my name. Don’t say what I mean. Don’t tell anyone you know what I mean. You don’t.

      Ben Gurion had many options available to him in 1948. There were Israeli Jews like Judah Magnes who urged him to delay to give UN-sponsored negotiations an opportunity. Of course, it was future PM Yitzhak Shamir who assassinated the chief UN peace negotiator, Count Folke von Bernadotte. BG knew he had superior military force and deliberately chose the path of war and independence. Also, other major sources have correctly claimed that BG and the Zionists knew the impact independence would have on Arab Jews in their homelands. They deliberately chose to ignore these matters in favor of Israeli independence. Zionists have always derogated the welfare of Diaspora Jews. And it is a shameful betrayal of Jewish (as opposed to Zionist) values.

      Except, those that realise their mistakes.

      Your racism and presumption in making judgements against “the Arabs” is noxious.

      Your comment went far off-topic. READ THE COMMENT RULES and follow them. You will not get another warning.

  10. The Jewish refugees were double victims, but the hypocricy of the Arab countries that expelled/murdered them should not go unchallenged. Israel used laws first deployed by Pakistan a year earlier against its non Muslim minorities, yet the Arab world did not condemn Pakistan and the exodus of non Muslim Hindus.
    How Pakistani Law Inspired Israel to Seize Arabs’ Landhttps://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-why-d-israel-seize-arabs-land-1.5332147
    The new Jewish state used the legal techniques of a new Muslim state to deprive its own mainly-Muslim refugees of their properties. How ironic.
    Benjamin PogrundNov. 26, Updated: Apr. 10, 2018

  11. It is always dangerous in historical terms to conflate two separate periods, separate regions, and separate societies as this use of the term does.”

    I agree which is why calling Israel Apartheid or Colonialism is wrong.

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