NB Ilan Pappe: only Jews were ‘ethnically cleansed’
Whereas ‘new’ historians like Ilan Pappe have spread the lie that Palestinians have been ‘ethnically cleansed’ even though their population has doubled, The Sephardi Perspective blog says that numbers of Jews in Arab countries have gone down by a factor of 150. Now, with the passing of House resolution no.185 on the rights of Jewish refugees, it will not be so easy to hoodwink people:
“Today, more than ever, certain obscene canards are thrown at Israel in its war of words with those who seek to delegitimize the Jewish State. A cursory study at the many statements that derive from certain extremists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause would see the lie that Israel is “ethnically cleansing” the Palestinians is rife. (..)
“However, when compared with the demographic trends for the Jews of Asia and North Africa, there appears to be only one type of ethnic-cleansing in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“Before 1948 there were nearly 900,000 Jews in ‘Arab lands’ and only 6,500 in 2001. This means that that there are more than 150 times less Jews in Arab nations than there was 60 years ago. When compared with the demographic trends for the Palestinians, there appears to be only one type of ethnic-cleansing in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“In fact, according to a newly released study by former CIA and State Department Treasury official titled The Palestinian Refugee Issue: Rhetoric vs. Reality for the Jewish Political Studies Review, the value of assets lost by both refugee populations is incomparable.
“Zabludoff uses data from John Measham Berncastle, who undertook the task to calculate the assets of the Palestinian refugees in the early 1950s under the aegis of the newly formed United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). In today’s figures, Zabludoff uses the US Consumer Price Index to calculate that the assets are worth $3.9 billion.
“The Jewish refugees, being greater in number and more urban, had assets that total in today’s prices almost double that of the Palestinian refugees.
“On top of this equation one must remember that Israel returned over 90% of blocked bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other items belonging to Palestinian refugees during the 1950s. This diminishes the UNCCP calculations further.
“Whereas the proponent of Israeli ethnic cleansing can show no official command to back up their account, Jewish ethnic cleansing from Arab lands was an official state policy in many instances.
“Jews were officially expelled from areas in Tunisia and Morocco. The Arab League actually released a statement urging Arab governments to facilitate the exit of Jews from Arab countries, a resolution which was carried out with a series of punitive measures and discriminatory decrees making it untenable for the Jews to stay in the countries.
“According to The New York Times on May 16, 1948 a series of measures taken by the Arab League to marginalize and persecute the Jewish residents of Arab League member states. The Times article reported on a “text of a law drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League which was intended to govern the legal status of Jewish residents of Arab League countries. It provides that beginning on an unspecified date all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be considered ‘members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine.’ Their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to ‘Zionist ambitions in Palestine.’ Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.”
“In 1951 the Iraqi Government passed legislation that made affiliation with Zionism a felony and ordered, “the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism.” This pushed tens of thousands of Jews to leave Iraq, while much of their property was confiscated by the state.
“In 1967, the Jews of Egypt were detained and tortured, and Jewish homes were confiscated. In Libya the government “urged the Jews to leave the country temporarily”, permitting them each to take one suitcase and the equivalent of $50.
“Furthermore, in 1970 the Libyan government issued new laws which confiscated all the assets of Libya’s Jews, issuing in their stead 15 year bonds. However, when the bonds matured no compensation was paid. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi justified this on the grounds that “the alignment of the Jews with Israel, the Arab nations’ enemy, has forfeited their right to compensation.
“Although these are just a few examples of what became common throughout the Arab world where Jews lived, these measures do not even refer to the pogroms and attacks on Jews and their institutions which caused major parts of the exodus.
“These facts are conveniently forgotten or not publicized for political expedience. The sad fact is that most Jews and pro-Zionists don’t even know many of these facts. This leaves the way open for people like Pappe to spout their half-baked theories without any mention of the true facts of the Middle East’s greatest ethnic-cleansing.
“However, a few recent events are changing people’s perceptions of history to include these important events. On April, 1, the US Congress adopted Resolution 185, which grants for the first-time-ever recognition to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
“The resolution text urges that the President and US officials participating in Middle East discussions to ensure that any reference to Palestinian refugees must “also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.”
“This resolution and greater recognition of the refugee issue and the ethnic-cleansing of Jews from the wider Arab world brings a clearer definition of the history to a greater number of people. This means that many won’t be so easily hoodwinked into buying empty and meaningless statements about the ethnic-cleansing of the Palestinian people.
“It is clear from any standard that one cannot possibly be ‘ethnically-cleansing’ a people from areas where they have seen growth double that of their neighboring areas. However, a people who have lost more than 150 times their number from an area over a few decades can clearly make a very strong case for being ‘ethnically-cleansed’.
7 Comments
When over 700,000 Palestinians out of a population of 1.1 million are forced from their homes by Israel beginning in 1948, what clever euphemism might one employ to replace the apt description of "ethnic-cleansing"?
Word games can be fun — but not when it comes to uprooting an immense, indigenous population and culture from its homeland.
The truth is that the Zionist conquest of Palestine could not happen unless mass immigration too Palestine by Jews was accelarated. For this reason Jewish terrorist organization planted bombs in Jewish targets in the Arab world in order to speed up this immigration. No self respecting historian can claim that the the Jews who have lived in Arab lands for thousands of years were suddenly ethnically cleansed due to inherent anti-semitism. The truth is that as soon as the Zionist ideology infected the Middle East hatred between Arab and Jew was born. Of course there was persecution against Jews in Arab lands because of the actions of the Zionists in Palestine. However to blame the Arabs for the Jews leaving Arab countries is outrageous seeing as the Zionists provided fincancial and ideological insentive for the Jews to leave!
Suzy,
Suggest you widen your reading beyond Marxists and conspiracy theorists.
All anyone has to do is read the book by Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, to learn the truth. Also, read a few books by David Icke and how the Rothschild’s funded most if not all of this “cleansing”. The British turned their heads as did the United States for money and control over oil, water, etc. One day, G-d will judge Zionists and I don’t want to be there when Ben-Gurion, Sharon, etc., have to face the G-d of the universe. Ya Haram! Ya Haram!
I’ll tell you why.
There are over a million Arabs living in Israel. This does not look like ethnic cleansing to me. These allegations, based overwhelmingly on Pappe’s agenda-driven claims which have been debunked. Even Benny Morris has written that there was no Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing in 1948.
There are only 4,500 Jews left in the Arab world of a population of one million. They were driven out not by war but a deliberate policy of state persecution.
How does the ethnic cleansing of jews in some arab countries invalidate the notion of arabs having been ethnically cleansed from what’s now Israel? How does the action of some arab goverments validates actions taken against civilian population in Palestine?
The forceful eviction of a people, such as in the case of house demolitions for the purpose of making palestinian lives so miserable that the only chance of having a normal life is having one outside their native land is considered under international law a form of ethnic cleansing.